


The Thing Is, I Love You

by bitochondria



Series: Like Butch and Sundance [3]
Category: Wiseguy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Vinnie Terranova, Canon-Typical Behavior, Coming Out, Domestic Fluff, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Past Drug Use, Past Torture, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Reluctantly Bisexual Frank McPike, Suicidal Thoughts, Vinnie and Frank figure out their relationship, Vinnie comes home from El Salvador, Vinnie isn't dead, but also Season 4 did happen, past trauma, which is to say the 1996 reunion movie does not happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29741916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitochondria/pseuds/bitochondria
Summary: Frank had never completely let himself believe that Vinnie Terranova was really, truly dead. Too many things didn't add up-- and besides, a world with no Vinnie was a world he wasn't sure he wanted to live in, anyway. So when Vinnie manages to find his way back to him, he knows this time he can't mince words. He and Vinnie need to figure out what it is they really mean to one another, even if it means taking down all the walls they've put up since that day Vinnie got out of prison.
Relationships: Dan "Lifeguard" Burroughs & Frank McPike & Vinnie Terranova, Frank McPike/Vinnie Terranova, Past Sonny Steelgrave/Vinnie Terranova
Series: Like Butch and Sundance [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185941
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Frank

**Author's Note:**

> Did someone say "25k words of Wiseguy fic in 2021?"
> 
> ...no?
> 
> Ah.
> 
> Well. Here it is anyway.

Politics did not mix with undercover work. 

Being a disbarred attorney did not mix with being a campaign manager. 

Getting dragged into the limelight by your wet-behind-the-ears junior undercover agent did not mix with being a career g-man, either, but Frank hoped he could avoid that particular anguish if he just managed to keep his professional distance. He liked Mikey, but he had less than zero desire to become his bosom buddy.

Mikey had the same reckless streak as Vince, after all.

There were some things a man simply couldn’t do twice. 

And yet, in some ways it felt like he’d spent the last few weeks on a time loop. He’d go into the office, Campbell would slap him with a backhanded compliment, he’d be given a disapproving eyebrow by the lovely and terrifying Hillary, Mikey would probably make some harebrained decision that  _ somehow _ worked out anyway— it would be more of the same. More of the same old shit he’d been wading through since his heart had been ripped out in Miami. 

Because if he came right down to it, well— not a single aspect of Frank McPike’s life was not a travesty. He was divorced, depressed, had developed some kind of hair-trigger rage issue the doctor told him was probably brain-damage related, the organization he had worked for for  _ fourteen years _ had disbanded because of lack of federal funding, and his best friend, the man he had been starting to understand he was in love with, had been dead for just over three months. Now his current agent, who had only semi-recently ceased to be a drunk, was practically manic, riding high on his niece’s survival, and courting a mayoral candidate. Frank’s emotional reserves were drained, and nothing was refilling them. He went through the motions, mostly told people what they wanted to hear, and occasionally snapped at people he theoretically liked. 

At least his own kid still seemed to like him. But he gave that about a year—  _ teenagers _ . 

Pulling into his driveway and getting out of his car took as much effort as building a shed or writing a fifty page classified document might have a few years ago. He would go inside, not even bothering to turn the lights on, heat himself up a bowl of Campbell’s  _ Home Cookin’ _ , and drink himself to an uneasy sleep. After so many years of trying to get Jenny to crawl out of the bottle, he was starting to live in there himself. He laughed. What else was there to do?

His hand on the doorknob, he felt something in his ribs go tight. 

Something wasn’t right. 

Was there a light on inside?

Had there been any resistance when he turned the key? 

He drew his weapon and opened the door as quietly as he could. 

The light  _ was  _ on. In the kitchen. He hadn’t turned it on this morning before he left. And he smelled— garlic? He squinted. Was someone  _ cooking _ in his kitchen?

No one he might  _ possibly _ want to be in his kitchen— Dan, Mikey, even Jenny— would have come when he wasn’t home, and Drake’s ability to cook ended at toaster pastries. Some nutcase like Royce had to be waiting for him, smiling some creepy empty-eyed smile, muttering insane hand-hewn proverbs about  _ home _ and what Frank had  _ done to him _ or some bullshit like that. He needed this like he needed another hole in his chest. 

He thought about going back to the car, driving to a phone booth, and calling Mikey or… someone. The police, maybe. But ultimately, it seemed like less effort to just go inside. Maybe he’d get shot. Maybe he wouldn’t. At least if he got shot, he would only have to deal with whatever bullshit was going on for a few minutes, and then there would only be oblivion.

Frank sidled around the corner with his gun cocked, tight to his chest, in two hands. 

The man at his stove turned around at some minor noise and— 

And Frank dropped his gun.

Because the man who was sauteeing something in his kitchen was  _ dead _ , and he was smiling that goofy crooked grin at him, and he was halfway across the kitchen now, and his arms were around Frank and Frank was shaking like he had been flash-frozen and  _ oh god he still smelled the same and—  _

“You’re home,” the homebreaker mumbled, lips on Frank’s neck and jaw. 

“You’re  _ dead _ ,” Frank breathed, barely audible. 

Vince refused to let go of him, cheek to cheek, arms tight on his shoulders, gently swaying as they stood.

For a second, Frank thought—  _ this is a dream. That’s why I can’t see his face _ .

“ _ I’m _ home,” Vince gasped, almost a sob, and then he took Frank’s face in his hands. He looked into Frank’s eyes for so, so much longer than should have been comfortable, and it felt like the last cool, clear oasis in the desert. He looked— he looked awful. Haggard, pale, eyes sunken, hair shaggy, face unshaven. And he was the most beautiful thing Frank thought he had ever seen in his entire life.

Vince brought his forehead to Frank’s, his eyes closing with a flutter and a sigh. 

Frank hazarded a soft, tentative touch to Vince’s very-solid, very-real cheek. “How are you not dead?” He felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “They told me you were dead, everyone, the CIA, the Salvadoreans, the— We all thought you were dead, Vince, Vince, we—” His lip was trembling, like a little kid. Everything inside him cracked like dropped sugar glass, all at once, and tears started pouring down his cheeks. “They bragged about it, they bragged about killing you, they  _ killed _ all of the men who—  _ I  _ almost killed one of them, before they got to him— I—” He broke down, absolutely sobbing. Unable to breathe, gasping, he wailed, “I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you every damn day,  _ how are you alive _ , how— I spoke at your  _ funeral _ , you bastard, I held your mother’s hand, I—” 

“Yeah, and I heard you outed me as an undercover agent,” Vince smiled, so much his usual self it felt like a trick.

“Your mother made me,” Frank growled, snot starting to drip down his upper lip. God, he was such a mess. He smacked Vince’s chest, hard, and meant it. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive, you enormous  _ fucking asshole!? _ ” He aggressively wiped at the tears running into his beard and then hit Vince again for good measure. “Where have you been? How did you survive?” He practically headbutted Vince, digging his face into his chest. “How did you get back to me?”

Vince wrapped his arms around Frank and rested his cheek on top of Frank’s head.

Frank sniffled, caring very little that he was leaving a wet spot on Vince’s shirt. 

Muffled, he muttered, “What’re you doing frying onions in my kitchen?”

Vince squeezed him tighter, laughed once, and then his laughter grew shaky, and stopped. Strained, voice cracking, moisture in his sinuses gumming up his vowels, Vince just murmured, “I missed you. I missed you so much. I just kept thinking— ‘I have to survive, because I have to get back to Frank.’ I had to see you again. No matter what else happened.” 

“Jesus, Vince,” Frank choked.

The waver in Vince’s voice erupted into full-scale weeping. 

Frank wasn’t sure how long they stood together beside a discarded gun in his kitchen, holding each other, gasping and sniveling like old ladies at a funeral. But if he were honest with himself, he would have been okay for it to have been forever. If the last thing he ever did was cry into Vince’s shirt, that would be alright with him. 

Vince pulled away, red-eyed and puffy-faced. He smiled. “Onions are gonna burn.” He wiped at his face, charming and boyish and  _ broken _ . “That’s prolly what’s making me cry.”

He moved back over to the stove without letting go of Frank’s fingers, like one or both of them might disapparate if the contact between them was broken. 

“What are you making?” Frank snuffled, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the inside of Vince’s hand. 

“Ragu.” Vince scraped at the pan. The onions were brown, but hadn’t quite burnt. “You had some frozen ground beef, and… not a lot else.”

“Well, I’m clinically depressed, so.” 

Vince snorted, halfway between a laugh and an attempt to stop leaking. “That my fault?”

“I’m told it could also be a side effect of the minor brain damage I’m still recovering from.”

Unselfconsciously, Vince pulled the backs of Frank’s fingers to his lips, and held them there, his eyes shut tight, his eyebrows furrowed deeply. 

Frank’s voice cracked again. “Vince, how are you here?” 

Vince’s eyes darted to the side. “I…” He breathed in with a hitch, the air catching in his throat. “I want to tell you the whole story. But I…” His whole face scrunched up. “I’m not… give me a, a half hour to get settled, then I can tell you."

Frank tried to stand up a little straighter. He needed to stop blubbering and be the strong one. “Are you… okay?”

“I dunno,” Vince shook his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am. I wasn’t until I got here, to your house. But when I stepped over the threshold, I…” He looked down with a pained smile. “Can I stay here for a little while?” 

“God, Vince, you can stay as long as you need, I—” He touched Vince’s face again. “Are you safe? Are they still after you?”

Again, Vince shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any ‘them’ left to be after me, other than maybe our own government.” He swallowed. “I just… god, Frank, I had to make Roger go inside my own house just to get the extra key for your place,” he laughed, weak and self-effacing. 

“You were with Lococco?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “He flew with me from Puerto Rico.” 

“Why were you and him in Puerto—” Frank shook his head. He said he’d tell him when he was ready. “Never mind.”

Vince emptied the container of ground beef on the counter into the pan and stirred it in with the onions. A tiny smile crept up the side of his face. 

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

Frank crossed his arms. “What’s that smile about?”

“I’m just thinking— you’re jealous.” He glanced at Frank out of the corners of his eyes. He was still smiling, but god he looked tired. More tired than Frank even felt. “Frank McPike is jealous of Roger Lococco.” 

If now wasn’t the time for honesty, there had never been a time for it at all.

“Yeah,” Frank nodded. “I am. I’ve spent the last three months trying to convince myself that there’s a point to trying to live without you, and it turns out you’ve been palling it up with Mr. Ghost Brigade. So yes, I am a little bit jealous, and a lot wondering why you didn’t call me instead of him.”

“I wasn’t sure if it was safe to contact you. I knew I was being used as some kind of political pawn, but I didn’t know by who— whether it was the NSA, or the CIA, or whether it really was just the Salvadorean government— I didn’t want your head on the altar of some… some plot to destabilize the communists or something, y’know?” He paused. “I didn’t know enough details until Roger told me, and by that point we were already on our way back to New York anyway.” 

“So you thought you’d just, what, come back from the dead and cook me dinner?”

“Well, I hadn’t planned on cooking dinner until I came in, and…” He shrugged, putting the spatula down. “Then it just kind of seemed like the right thing to do.” 

Frank brushed his knuckles against the back of Vince’s hand, and Vince interlaced their fingers once more. 

“Am I…” He took a deep breath, afraid to ask. “Am I allowed to know you’re alive? Or are you gonna have to be a poltergeist like Lococco?” 

Vince smiled on one side of his mouth, crooked and genuine. “No, I’m officially alive. Got a working passport with my real name on it and everything.” 

“You’re really back for real, then?” 

“God, I hope so.” 

Frank laughed one silent peal of laughter, glancing down at the floor. 

“Your mom know?”

“Not yet,” Vince grimaced. “I figured if I just showed up and made dinner at  _ her _ house, she and Aiuppo would have twin heart attacks.” He bit the inside of his lip, looking embarrassed. “I kind of thought maybe we could go together. If you’re okay with that.”

Frank squeezed his hand tighter. “I’d be happy to go with you.”

He bit his lip, hard. 

The last few months had— they had been the worst of his life. Vince looked worse for wear— on top of the long hair and unshaven face, he seemed exhausted, brittle— but he was here, and he appeared to have all his limbs and digits. It didn’t fix everything that had happened. It didn’t change the fact that Frank had honestly contemplated ending it all. It didn’t magically cure his depression. 

But… it felt like color was draining back into his vision. Like maybe, just maybe, someday he might be able to believe that there was some measure of good left in the world. 

He wasn’t going to squander that.

“I’d—” He choked a little on his words, despite his intentions. “I’m actually pretty sure I’m never letting you go anywhere alone again.” 

“I would like that, actually,” Vince admitted, one side of his mouth pulling up slightly. “Least for a little while.” 

“See, the thing is…” Frank continued, taking off his tear-stained glasses and rubbing them on the end of his tie. He licked his lips, willing himself to actually say what he wanted to say out loud.

When he slipped his glasses back on, Vince’s face willed him to finish. He looked terrified, cornered. Frank couldn’t leave him in suspense. He couldn’t keep dancing around it.

“The thing is, I love you.” He blinked and looked off to the side.

Vince’s jaw clenched. His eyes went wet and glassy, and he pivoted slightly, looking at the cabinets. 

“Do you have any tomatoes?”

Frank short-circuited.  _ Tomatoes? _

His mouth started answering before his brain finished processing. “Yeah, there’s a can under the utensil drawer, I think.”

Vince nodded and opened the cabinet, and pulled out two standard-sized cans of tomatoes. 

“Fresh would be better.”

“You’re lucky I have anything more nutritious than whiskey, Vince.”

“Can opener?”

_ Was he—  _

Frank opened the drawer with the can opener and the corkscrew and the funnel he never used for anything, and handed it to Vince.

_ Was he just going to pretend he didn’t hear him? _

As he was opening the first can, his forehead crinkled and his nostrils flared. His mouth went flat, and he started blinking second by second. He cleared his throat, and then the corners of his mouth twitched. He swallowed. A stray trail of liquid made its way down one cheek, and he brushed it off almost angrily. 

Dumping the tomatoes into the pain, he ordered Frank to help. “Can you fill a pot with water?” He cleared his throat again.

Frank did as he was told, bewildered and horrified by the fact that Vince’s reaction to  _ I love you _ was apparently angry tears. He set the pot on the stove to boil, watching Vince’s face carefully. 

“Thank you.” Vince put the empty cans in the sink and turned the heat up on the sauce. 

He crossed his arms and turned to look at Frank, leaning back against the counter. “I was drugged,” he began, “as part of what they did to keep me… still. And I kept picturing you saving me. Like you did when I was— when I was in the hospital that time. And…” His jaw was trembling, and he squeezed his tongue between his teeth and looked up at the ceiling, a silent trail of salt making its way down either cheek now. “And, y’know, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, I knew they had made seem like I was dead, and that they’d never let you go to El Salvador to look for me, anyway.” He bit his lip and sniffed uselessly. “But I kept thinking, y’know, ‘one day I’m gonna get back to him,’ and, y’know, I imagined it so many times, that you’d finally just  _ say it _ , and…” He shook his head slightly, which made the tears roll faster. Then he rolled his eyes and rubbed his wet cheeks against his shoulders. “And I’d say it back and then everything would just be  _ fixed _ , it’d all be like the last few months were just a nightmare.”

Vince’s face crumpled. He looked like he was about to start sobbing, and then he closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath in instead. “But now it’s really happening and— and I can’t say it back, because…” He shrugged, looking Frank in the eye. “It’s not all fixed. And I don’t know if I can believe that you really mean it the way I need you to mean it, not outside this moment, not when we’re anywhere but alone, inside your house, where no one even knows I’m not dead.”

Sometimes, Frank forgot just how damn  _ savvy _ Vince was. He could come off like such a meathead, and Frank  _ knew _ it was half put-on, but still— he had the ability to understand and simply verbalize complex emotions like nobody else Frank knew. He could take hurt and betrayal and grind it down into a razor thin edge with his words. Frank was stripped bare— Vince needed an answer without loopholes or caveats, or it would be over. 

Frank nodded, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. 

“Okay. Who do you want me to call?”

“What?”

“Whoever you want to be the next person to tell you’re alive— I will call them right now and tell them, ‘hey, Vince isn’t dead, and he’s here at my house, and I love him.’” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Uncle Mike?” 

One of Vince’s eyebrows just barely crept up, an expression halfway between distrust and delight playing on his lips. “You’re serious.”

“Vincenzo, I’m always serious, you know that.” He shrugged with just his shoulders. “My new boss? Jenny? Your mom?” 

Vince tilted his head to the side, eyes widening. “Okay,  _ I’m _ not ready for that one.”

Frank walked over to the receiver on the wall and took it into his hand. “I’m calling Uncle Mike.”

“I cannot believe you’re actually going to do this,” Vince laughed, earnestly, some of the ragged edges melting off him for a second.

Frank dialed blind, staring at Vince the whole time. He couldn’t quite believe he was doing this, either, but— 

But if Vince needed to know he was serious, he was going to show him he was serious. 

The phone rang three or four times, and Frank pulled his mouth away from the receiver. “If he’s not home should I leave a message?”

“ _ No _ , you should not leave a message!” Vince was grinning, shaking his hands back and forth in front of his face. “You can’t drop ‘yo, your dead friend’s alive’ on a message!”

The call went to the answering machine. 

“Hey Uncle, it’s Frank.” Frank continued staring at Vince, who was shooting him daggers with his eyes. “Call me back when you get the chance. I have a surprise for you.” 

He hung up.

Vince crumpled over with laughter, holding his head in his hands. 

“You’ve lost your mind,” he howled, straightening, showing his eyeteeth in that beautiful, twinkle-eyed Vince smirk. “Frank. You don’t need to—” He pressed his lips together and crossed his arms. “I don’t need you to start chanting slogans and wearing rainbows, okay? I just want some confirmation that… if I tell you I love you, you’re not going to throw it back in my face the next time someone  _ wonders _ about us. That if we start this back up again…” He put his hands out to the sides, palms up in supplication. “That what we’re starting up is… that it’s not just gonna be getting handsy when we’re between girlfriends, right? ‘Cause I just…” He shrugged. His tone cold and smooth as glass, he finished far more serious than he began, “I don’t think I can take that ‘in another life’ bullshit again.”

Frank laughed, sharp and bitter. He deserved that. 

“I understand,” he nodded, hands on his hips. “But what the hell is this if it isn’t ‘another life?’”

Vince eyed him warily, and then turned to stir the sauce. 

“Water’s boiling.” He eyed the pot. “You got any pappardelle, fettuccine?” 

“I got bowties and elbow macaroni and that’s it.” 

“You really  _ are _ depressed.”

“I am, but the pasta situation is because I’m Irish.” 

Vince snorted. “Okay. Bowties, I guess.” 

Frank dug a dusty box of bowtie pasta out from a cabinet and dumped them in the water. 

“Did you salt the water?”

“No.”

“Then do it now.”

“How much?”

“It should taste like the ocean.”

Frank squinted. “I’m not going to taste boiling salt water.”

Vince rolled his eyes. “Where is the salt?”

Frank handed it to him, and he put what Frank would consider an unhealthy amount of salt in the water. 

“Well, good thing I don’t have high blood pressure or anything,” he droned, dryly sarcastic enough to dessicate a sponge.

“You don’t drink the water, Frank,” Vince sighed. He gave him an unbelievably dirty look through the steam rising off the stove.

Frank crossed his arms again. “Since when are you Mr. Mangia Bene, anyway?”

“Are you kidding? My mother would think she failed in her duty to produce viable offspring if I didn’t know how to cook pasta.” He raised one eyebrow, stirring. “Make me move back home and relearn Knife Skills and Olive Oil 101.”

“Do you want me to call in sick tomorrow, we can go see her? I mean— you know, your mom and Aiuppo are still here— they’ve been staying at one of his New York places since the funeral. We wouldn’t have to fly to Arizona.” 

Vince quietly nodded. 

“Just so I’m prepared, who… actually knows you’re alive?”

“You and Roger. Well, and the federal Government, I guess. After Roger picked me up in El Salvador, we— well, I spent some time in Puerto Rico trying to confirm they hadn’t retired my social security number yet. I think if I weren’t a fed I’d still be trying to convince them I’m not just a very heavy ghost or something.” He glanced at Frank again. “I quit, by the way. I mean, I  _ would _ be quitting, I guess, if the OCB still existed.” 

Frank sort of assumed that was the case. Vince had technically been trying to quit since Steelgrave died. 

“Vince. You remember how you told me that if you died before me, I should scatter your ashes at Yankee Stadium?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he swallowed. “I think…” He took a deep breath before admitting this. “I think your mom might be less surprised to hear that I’m in love with you than you think.” He cleared his throat, rocking on his heels. “Since there weren’t any ashes, I…” Even though Vince was standing in front of him, the memory of that day made his face hot and his eyes watery. “I asked Carlotta if she wanted to bring something, uh,” he swallowed, “Something small of yours, something we could burn and scatter, and… The two of us went, and… well, your mom saw me do a lot of crying, between that and the memorial service.” 

Vince watched him with careful, quiet deliberation as he spoke, and then smiled a tiny, wan smile. “I mean, let’s be honest, here. There’s a reason she spends so much of her time worrying about when I’m gonna get married, right?” His brows arced up. “Least you’re Catholic.” 

“Oh, god, you’re not gonna start making me go to church if we start dating, are you?”

“Easter and Christmas at least,” Vince joked. Well. Hopefully it was a joke. “We can negotiate Ascension and the Epiphany.” 

He stirred the sauce and checked the pasta. His eyes kept darting to Frank. 

When he put the spoon down, he cleared his throat. “So.  _ Dating _ , huh?”

“Yeah, even though it makes me feel like a teenager to put it that way.” 

“Like, official as a couple, ‘this is my boyfriend,’ dating.”

“We probably shouldn’t tell William S. Sessions that, but yes. Dating.” Frank paused. He couldn’t remember what it was like to  _ ask someone out _ . How did these things start, except by accident? He stood up as straight as he could. “That you are standing here in front of me right now is a fucking miracle, Vince. And it’s not even the first miracle you and I have been given. I’ve spent the last three months every day waking up wishing, ‘please, let today be the day we all get proven wrong, and Vince comes back from the dead.’ And then I think, ‘or maybe today is the day I jump off a pier.’”

He squared his shoulders, breathing in deeply, and held his hands out in front of him, palms up in supplication. “I know I’m a loser, Vince. But I’m not so much of a loser that I’m going squander the time we have  _ again _ . I’ve lost you too many times already. So…” He rubbed at his chin and cheeks with his hand, looking up at the ceiling. “When and if you’re interested, yes, I would like to…” His eyelids fluttered rapidly. What there a way to say this that didn’t sound ridiculously stupid? “I want to fucking date you, Vince.”

Vince’s cheeks dimpled, but he kept his lips pressed nearly flat together. After a long gaze and a slow blink, he asked, “You got a colander?”

“Yes-I-have-a-colander,” Frank snapped, all one word, like a German compound. He was going to need to be patient. Vince had been— well, he had been having god knows what happening to him the last few months— whatever it was he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about— and even outside of that, Frank had certainly done plenty to make him gunshy about accepting his overtures. But Vince’s total refusal to engage with Frank’s statements of intent seemed specifically targeted to annoy him. 

He got the colander out from off the back of a cabinet door under the counter, and took a very deep breath. “You want me to drain the pasta?”

“Yeah, thanks.” 

Frank drained the pasta as Vince tasted and added some final seasoning to the sauce. As Frank was scooping bowties into bowls, Vince came up behind him and ever-so-gently rested his forehead on the back of Frank’s skull. He draped his arms over his shoulders, rubbing the bridge of his nose into Frank’s hair. 

“You remember how you said, if you died first, I should take Drake out fishing?”

Frank’s words caught just under his solar plexus. He nodded.

“Maybe we could… do that together, sometime, instead. The three of us.”

“I would like that,” Frank rumbled, bringing his hand up to cover Vince’s hand. “I would like that a lot.”

Vince kissed the back of Frank’s neck, just behind his ear. 

As they sat down to dinner, Vince looked around expectantly. “You don’t have any candles, do you?”

“Candles?” Frank asked incredulously. “Yeah, in the linen closet. Case the lights go out. Why?”

Vince rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna need to step up your  _ woo _ -ing game if you think you’re gonna get me to agree to be your  _ boyfriend _ .” He ducked out of the kitchen and down the hall towards the linen closet, came back with two tapered candles, lit them, and stuck each one into a glass with melted wax.

Frank tried not to smile too widely.

“So,” Vince nodded, taking his fork in his hand, “Roger tells me you’re officially FBI now, and you’re working with Mike Santana?” 

“Roger tells you— Jesus, Vince, how does he know this shit? And how long have you two been talking that he’s given you this…  _ debriefing _ ?”

That beautiful smirk crept across Vince’s face, tired eyes crinkling at the corners. “I fuckin’  _ love _ how jealous you are of Roger. What the hell did he say to you in Lynchboro?”

“He didn’t say anything to me, he’s just—” Frank furrowed his brow, spearing a bowtie. “He’s your age, he’s an attractive man… why,  _ should _ I be jealous? Was there something he  _ might _ have said to me that might make me jealous?”

Vince grinned and chuckled as he swallowed. “Me an’ Roger are like you and Uncle Mike, Frank. He might be a good lookin’ guy, but I ain’t gonna fuck him.” 

Frank, still scowling, brought his fingers to his mouth as he chewed. “This is good,” he declared, slightly surprised that anything made in his kitchen with his dusty food-stores could taste okay. 

“Well, it’s not prison food,” Vince muttered glibly, looking past the edge of the table. 

“That what you’ve been eating?”

Vinced nodded. “Among other things. How’s Santana?”

“Well, Mikey’s a recovering alcoholic, and I’m becoming a functional alcoholic, so we make a good pair.” 

Vince frowned, just a little.

“He’s alright. He’ll be happy to know you’re alive, too.” 

“How’s the FBI?”

“‘Meet the new boss…’”

Vince joined him for the second half of the line. “Same as the old boss.’” 

They smiled at each other over pasta and the world’s saddest candle holders. 

“Well. Except actually it’s miserable, and my new boss is a Grade-A jerkoff who clearly thinks I’m a useless dinosaur. But you’re here, now, so even if the next boss is Nero, things are improving.” 

Frank leaned his elbow on the table and his cheek on his hand, his index finger along his jaw and the knuckle of his middle finger against his lip. He put his other hand out on the table palm up, fingers crooked in welcome. Vince touched the tips of his fingers to the tips of Frank’s, and interlaced them in one smooth, silken motion. 

“I can’t believe you’re alive, Vince.” He shook his head. “I better never fucking wake up if this is a dream.” 

Vince breathed out through his nose, his line of sight darting off into the distance. “I can’t believe it either, to tell you the truth.” He squeezed Frank’s fingers. “Frank…” He looked off to the side, licking his lips. “Were you serious when you said that thing about jumping off a pier?”

Frank considered lying—  _ no, it was just hyperbole, sarcasm, the usual grumpy old man routine _ — but instead he quietly tipped his head in agreement. 

“Are we…” Vince squinted one eye. “Are we  _ okay _ enough for a relationship?”

“Probably not,” Frank admitted. “I can begrudgingly recommend my government-mandated psychiatrist as not a total schmuck, though.”

“You’re in therapy?”

Frank puffed one cheek out and nodded. He pointed at his head, and then picked his fork back up. “Brain damage, remember?” He released Vince’s hand. “I apparently have a mood disorder. Eat your pasta.” 

He caught the tiny crooked smile that Vince buried in a mouthful of noodles. 

They continued to eat through conversation, propriety taking a back seat to catching up. Besides— Frank had never worried about shit like talking with his mouth full around Vince. He wasn’t going to start now just because he wanted something more than friendship. 

“I think I might have already asked you this,” Vince sighed, chewing, “But it’s okay if I stay here for a few days, right?”

“You can stay as long as you need to.” 

“You already told me that, didn’t you?”

“It bears repeating.” Frank watched the lines deepen on Vince’s face. “Vin, are you having trouble remembering things?”

“Yeah.” He took a sip of his water. “Doctors in San Juan said I seemed okay, but… I don’t know, Frank, I keep  _ repeating _ myself. Forgetting what I’ve said, not remembering why I walked into a room. Roger noticed— told me I made a ‘cute goldfish’ and then said short-term memory can get ‘burnt out from trauma.’ Said he used to lose days at a time after Vietnam.”

He swallowed. 

“I’m probably going to irritate the hell out of you, so. Sorry in advance.” 

Frank could say something comforting, tell Vince he wouldn’t get annoyed. But he wasn’t that soppy and he wasn’t that good at lying to Vince. 

“Everything irritates me.” He shrugged. “Won’t be any different than any other day.” 

“Yeah, well, we’ll see if you still think I’m boyfriend material when I’ve asked you if you want a cup of coffee for the seventh time while you’re already holding a cup of coffee.” 

“Hey, I said I want to make things official between us, I never said you were boyfriend material.” Frank tossed his head to the side slightly, sneering theatrically at Vince. “You may recall my father thinks you’re a ‘hood.’” 

Vince grinned, and then his face softened into tender concern. “How  _ is _ your dad?” 

“Oh, you know. Seducing octogenarians, saying disparaging things to male nurses.” He shrugged. “ _ Also _ forgetting things. He asks after you sometimes. After the second time I told him we thought you were dead, I didn’t have it in me to tell him again.”

“God, Frank, I’m sorry.” Vince put his hand on Frank’s upper arm, softly squeezing. “I—”

He was interrupted by the phone. 

Frank stood up and walked backwards halfway to the receiver, eyes on Vince. “If it’s Uncle Mike, what should I say?”

“Tell him to come over.” 

“And if it’s anyone else?”

Vince grimaced. “Nothing yet.”

Frank picked up the phone.

“McPike.” He turned speaker phone on so Vince could hear.

“Frank, what the hell do you mean you ‘have a surprise’ for me? You know coming from you that sounds like a threat, right?”

Vince covered his mouth and practically quacked trying to muffle a laugh. 

Frank bit the inside of his lip, trying not to make a concordant noise of laughter. He swallowed and steadied himself.

“Are you free for a little fun?”

“...you’re not drunk, are you?”

Vince leaned back in his chair, chest shaking, hand still over his mouth.

“I am not drunk, I just have something I want to show you. Can you come over?”

There was silence on the other end. “Is everything okay, Frank?”

“Everything is fine,” Frank explained, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece to smirk at Vince. 

“Well… if everything is fine, is this something I need to come see urgently? Because I’m supposed to be on call tonight.”

“One sec.” Frank held his hand over the receiver again. “Is it?”

“Nah.” Vince shrugged.

“Not particularly.”

“Can I come tomorrow morning, then? Before work?”

“Sure.”

“And you’re sure everything is okay?”

“It’s hunky-dory, Uncle.” 

“Frank, whatever you’re smoking, you better have some for me when I come by, you hear?”

“G’night, Dan.”

“...g’night, Frank.”

Frank hung up the phone and muttered, mockingly, “ _ ‘Are you drunk,’ _ hey, not tonight, pal!”

“I dunno,” Vince cautioned, tilted slightly backwards onto the back legs of his chair, “It sounded to me more like he thinks you’re either high or having a psychotic break.”

“Oh, jesus, don’t say that,” Frank growled, gritting his teeth. “This better  _ not _ be a psychotic break.”

“If either of us is having a psychotic break, I’d think it’d me.” He tipped further back in the chair, one hand steadying himself on the table. He changed the subject. “You know, I never told you this, since we were supposed to be pretending we weren’t into each other, but I like the beard a lot.”

Frank ignored the psychotic break comment, since Vince didn’t seem ready to continue that conversation, and rubbed his chin. “You don’t think it makes me look old?”

“Nah, the salt and pepper look is good on you. Hot. I…” Vince got quiet, head tilted slightly to the side. “Before all this I spent a lot of time thinking about, well, about how it would feel if you kissed me, or…”

Blinking rapidly, Frank felt himself going warm. Between this admission and the lovely, delicate little kiss Vince had given him before dinner, maybe he did still have a chance. 

“I would say we could give it a try, but…” He looked Vince square in the eye. “Kinda sounds like we should give  _ talking _ a try, first.” 

Eyes tired, half-lidded, Vince nodded with a long, slow exhalation. He swallowed, dark eyebrows casting a heavy shadow over his cheekbones.

“But… only when you’re ready to talk.” He walked back over to the kitchen table and picked up his plate, and put his hand out for Vince’s. “Seconds?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to hear about how I got in a hot tub with my pants on and tried to kill one of the bastards who took you?” He walked over to the counter and started ladling more pasta. “Or how Guzman ended up dead?”

“Roger gave me the cliffs notes version of what happened with Guzman, but I would very much like to hear about you trying to kill a Salvadorean assassin in a hot tub.”

“I’m not even going to ask how Roger knows about what happened with Guzman.” He returned to the table with more food, and launched into the whole sordid tale of the last few months. When they finished eating, he made coffee, and plopped a box of slightly stale  _ Almost Homes _ on the table. Vince drank, and listened, and chewed slow circles around a handful of cookies one by one. 

“And… then we get to me driving back from looking for Mikey at a damn high school and coming home… to find my dead best friend broke into my house to make me dinner.” 

Vince downed the last of his coffee. 

He looked at Frank.

And he made an expression like he was pleading, desperate for help. 

And then scrunched his face up and swallowed, looking down at the table.

And then looked off to the side over his shoulder, sniffling loudly.

“Well,” he began, sniffling again, rubbing his cheek and eye against the shoulder of his t-shirt, “I’m sure as hell glad you didn’t manage to get yourself thrown in jail while I was gone, because…” He took a wobbly, wet breath in through his mouth, open on one side, pinched shut with his teeth on the other. “Because I can’t go home, and…” He tried to smile, and nearly managed. “And I  _ really _ don’t want to have to stay with my mom and Rudy.” 

“Honestly, the idea that you’d somehow come back and I’d be in federal prison was just about the only reason I didn’t do anything that put me in federal prison.” Frank pulled a cookie in half, crumbs falling to the table. “Any step that I’ve taken to keep myself upright and functional…” He shook his head, admitting something he hadn’t admitted to himself up until this point. “If I’ve made a single good decision these last few months, it’s been because I’ve predicated it with ‘When Vince comes back.’” 

“You really believed in me that much, huh?”

“I had no other choice. Every time I let myself think maybe you were really gone, I…” His voice cracked on the next few words, then dropped into a subterranean register. “It made it real hard not to want to just… go with you.”

Vince gave Frank a puppyish expression and lightly kicked him under the table. “Frank, I think maybe we got some codependency issues.”

“That’s what the shrink says, too.” Frank crammed the second half of his cookie into his mouth, and finished his joke spewing crumbs. “And he doesn’t even know I’m in love with you.”

Smirking ever-so-slightly, Vince looked up at Frank from below his eyelashes.

“Say that again.”

Still chewing, Frank muttered, “The therapist thinks I’m codependent, and that’s part of why I refused to believe you’re dead.”

Vince kicked him again. “The other part.”

“Oh, yeah.” Frank rolled his eyes, feigning nonchalance as best he could. He was not a demonstrative man, and so far the words did not get easier to say with each utterance. If he had his druthers, no one would ever talk about love or feelings, and the people you cared about would just  _ know _ how you felt without having to vocalize it. He tilted his head slightly to the side and affected a half-lidded expression of annoyance. “I’m in love with you.” 

Leaning on his palm, elbow on the table, Vince’s smirk took on a glittery luster. The corners of his eyes wrinkled and the light from the half-burnt candles made his baby-blues look almost green. 

But he didn’t say anything.

“Vin, you’re gonna give me a fucking complex,” Frank sighed. “A man can only bare his soul so many times without response before he starts to feel a little like he’s teetering on a precipice.” He wobbled his hand out in front of him to demonstrate unsteady ground. And then he gently kicked Vince back underneath the table. 

Still looking at him with soft-eyed sweetness, Vince abruptly changed the subject. “Hey, you got any liquid courage I can borrow?”

“More than is healthy,” Frank admitted. “How much courage do you need and how quickly?”

“Fast would be good. Before I change my mind.”

“I have decent whiskey and bad vodka.”

“Bad vodka’s good.” 

Frank brought the bottle to the table and poured Vince a shot. He downed it, and poured himself another. Thinking about why Vince wanted liquor and where this was going, Frank reluctantly got up and poured himself another cup of coffee instead of joining him in libations. 

Downing a third shot of vodka and grimacing, Vince looked off in the direction of the wall.

He made a smacking noise with his tongue and sighed.

“I was showering.” He fingered the edge of the shot glass, gazing into its depths. “They dragged me out, soaking wet, I had no idea what was going on, and I dunno, one of them knocked me out, I guess. I woke up on an airplane, and…” His face wrinkled in disgust. “I guess they dressed me. They kept threatening to kill me, but…something just…”

“Why bother getting you on an airplane if they just wanted you dead?”

“Exactly,” Vince nodded. 

“I thought the same thing when we found Guzman— La Mano Blanco killed him in his bed. Why would you be the one and only person whose corpse they didn’t leave as a message?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t— it wasn’t the kind of behavior you’d expect from a  _ death squad _ , y’know? They were asking me all sorts of questions about Gallagher, shit I didn’t know a thing about, and when I couldn’t answer, they drugged me. Probably pentathol but I don’t know. Harder stuff came later, I think.” He breathed in. “I still couldn’t answer any of their questions, so they beat the shit out of me. Made some very creative threats, some of which they carried through on. We got into Salvadorean airspace, and…”

He bit the inside of his lip, squinting. “Y’know, Italian and Spanish have a lot of words kind of in common, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed. He watched Vince’s adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. 

“So, they told me they were going to push me out of the plane. But I could kind of understand some of what they were saying to each other, and it sounded like they knew somehow that I was a fed. If they thought I was just a gun runner, it— dunno. It just didn’t add up.” He picked up his empty shot glass and spun it around between his fingers. “My first thought was, ‘shit, this is us. This is some kid of retribution for Masters or Strichen or something.’” He shrugged, hands out wide to the side, head ducking down. “And I dunno, it still could’ve been, I guess. But then they didn’t push me out of the plane. And instead, when we landed, they took me to some compound, and…”

He carefully placed the shot glass back on the table, one corner at a time, and kept his eyes on it like it was a crystal ball. He took a deep breath in. 

“I spent the next few weeks tied up, tortured, I guess. I apparently have some bad fractures that didn’t heal right, so that sucks. I don’t… really  _ know _ exactly what they did, really— every time I started to feel like I was getting an idea of what was going on, that time started moving normally, that I could make sense of the words I was hearing, they pumped me full of…” He shook his head. “I dunno. Some drug cocktail.” He flipped his arm so his hand was palmside up and leaned in to Frank, and pointed to the inside of his elbow. “Scar tissue. I’m gonna look like an ex-junkie for the rest of my life.”

Frank reached to touch his arm, but with his fingers hovering a few inches above Vince’s bicep, Vince flinched. He pulled his hand back.

“No, it’s okay,” Vince nodded. “I’m still just… edgy.” He took Frank’s hand and placed it on his arm. Frank ran his fingers over Vince’s skin, reverent and guilty. “Doctor said I’m just lucky I don’t have hepatitis or, fucking, HIV or something.” His eyes fluttered shut and open. “I mean, maybe I’m being prejudiced assuming La Mano Blanco doesn’t sterilize their needles properly, but…”

“Death squads aren’t usually known for their safe and effective sharps disposal programs?”

A ghost of a smile made it to Vince’s lips. “You got it. I didn’t get  _ everything  _ pieced together until you explained what happened with Guzman and his connections to the CIA, but… every once in a while, I’d overhear something or— something I was pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating, anyway, and… I started to figure out that, whatever the hell they were doing to me, they didn’t actually want me dead.Or— well, one of them did, one of them didn’t. I was being used as some kind of political bargaining chip or something. The thing that really tipped me off— one day, a guy I didn’t know came in and was arguing with one of my… regulars, and after they had this big blowout, the new guy came over and reached down my shirt and ripped off my crucifix.” He shook his head with an angry, scrunched up scowl. 

Frank started to unknot his tie. 

“I knew then that they needed to  _ convince _ someone I was dead, but didn’t actually want me to  _ be _ dead.” 

Taking his tie off over his head, Frank nodded. That was the same thought he had had when Vince’s cross showed up in a dead man’s hand— how the hell would a guy who died by  _ firing squad _ have somehow grabbed a kidnapped federal agent’s necklace right before he kicked the bucket? 

“I’m still pissed off about that. Ma’s gonna be pissed, too.”

“Carlotta,” Frank explained, opening the top button of his shirt, “was very happy to know,” he unbuttoned the second button, “that it was safe with me.” He pulled the fabric aside to show Vince that his cross had been recovered. 

Vince leaned in and touched the chain of his necklace against Frank’s skin. 

“How in the hell…” 

“Showed up in the hand of Ruiz’s corpse. Passed into the hands of the CIA, in an evidence bag left on a table, and from there into my pocket. Started wearing it after the memorial service— I was… I should’ve given it to your mother, but…” 

Vince’s fingertips still lingered on Frank’s skin. He grinned. “You stole evidence from the CIA?”

“Clearly they had it coming.” Frank reached behind his neck and started to unhook the crucifix’s chain. 

Vince grabbed his hand. “No.”

“What?”

“You… you should keep it.” He palmed Frank’s chest, gently pressing the metal to his skin. “Obviously brought you more luck than it did me.” 

Frank could feel the heat from Vince’s hand and the beat of his heart against his skin. He put his hand over Vince’s. “I held onto it so I could give it back to you when you came back.”

“Keep holding on to it. I want to know that’s where it is. With you. Right here.” 

Vince’s gaze was level, and so serious Frank felt like he was wilting under a heat lamp. He picked Vince’s hand up from his chest and kissed the backs of his fingers and tried not to start sniffling and blinking again. Wet heat pooled behind his nose and he swallowed.

“Christ, you’d think I’m going through menopause with all this,” he gestured at his own face and swallowed again. 

“Frank, I cried in front of  _ Roger _ probably forty times this last week. I trust the guy with my life, but… you feel very foolish when a man who calls everyone  _ Buckwheat _ is patting you awkwardly on the back and muttering ‘there, there.’” 

Frank covered his mouth, trying not to laugh at this image. He thought about his own breakdown in front of Lococco, and how he mostly just got yelled at. Obviously Lococco was a better friend to Vince than he’d have ever really guessed, but he was also clearly not equipped to be anyone’s confessor. 

“So…” Vince sighed. “A while after they took the crucifix, I don’t know exactly how long— at least a week, maybe more— they were starting to get kind of sloppy in terms of keeping an eye on me. I guess they figured between the drugs and barely feeding me and not letting me sleep, I was too out of it to do anything to them even if I wanted to. But…”

He looked off to the side, mouth twitching very slightly in that same direction. “One day they left me with just this one guy— there had been a lot of shooting outside the day before, so I figure they— well. I don’t know, they seemed military, so I figured they were involved outside. The guy that stayed, he was… he was reading a newspaper, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘you are never going to get a chance better than this one.’ I was, uh,” he swallowed, face twitching to the right again, “Handcuffed to this chair, uh, behind my back, and… I just stood up and ran at him, and, I, uh, I flipped the chair off, and over my head,” he demonstrated the movement halfway, and then winced, “dislocated my shoulder, I guess, although at the time I didn’t really feel it, and…” 

Eyebrows furrowing, Vince screwed the cap off the vodka and poured another shot. He downed it and took a shaky breath in. “I brought it down over this guy’s head, and Frank, I…” He brought his hand to his mouth, face tense, eyes haunted. “I’ve never hurt someone like that before. I mean, it was… with my bare hands, I…” He shook his head and looked off to the side. “Not when I was boxing, not in prison, not as a wiseguy, not as an agent— I just. I beat on him until my wrists and hands were chopped meat, and the chair was… firewood. Splinters. I probably killed him, but I don’t even know. I didn’t check, I just ran.” He rubbed at his eyes, red and wet. 

“You’d been drugged and tortured. That’s what anyone would do if they got a chance.”

“But I don’t think that’s  _ true _ , Frank. The whole time I was running, I just,” he gasped, pushing the heel of his hand against his eye, face growing redder, his voice high and tight, “High out of my mind, I just kept thinking, ‘Pete’s never going to forgive me, he’s gonna tell me I’m going to hell when I get home.’ I forgot he was… And I did it out of malice. And…” 

He broke, weeping openly. Frank threw his arms around him and squeezed his shaking shoulders.

“I… what if I’m like a dog,” he sobbed, “that’s got a taste for blood, y’know?” He buried his face in Frank’s shoulder. “Like this is something that’s,” he gasped, “something that’s always been inside me, and now that I’ve let it out…”

Franked roared against Vince’s skin, “You are a moral man, a  _ good _ man, Vince, the kind of man who believes so much in, in  _ people _ that despite yourself you want to see the best in  _ criminals _ , you— you are not a fucking  _ dog _ .” He pulled back, taking Vince’s crumpled, wet face in his hands. “And you know what? Even if you’re right, I don’t care. So you have some kind of…  _ darkness _ in you, so fucking what. I mean, I told you I tried to deep fry Guerrera, right?” 

Vince nodded silently, eyes on his knees, tears still streaking his cheeks.

“And if that  _ is _ the case, then we make sure you get a job rescuing baby bunnies or something, something where you never have to be put in a position where you might have to hurt someone ever again.” He pulled Vince back against himself, fiercely. “I will never, ever let anyone touch you again, you got it?”

Vince nodded and choked. Frank held onto him, his solidness, his heat, the smell of him, and didn’t let go until he stopped shaking. When his quiet, sticky gasping subsided, Vince pulled back slightly, so they were forehead to forehead. Very lightly, he touched his lips to Frank’s. Just a brush, and then he sat back up straight.

He swallowed. “Can we move to the living room?” 

“Of course.” 

Wearier than Frank had ever seen him, Vince smiled. “I really do like the beard.”

Frank laughed and rubbed Vince on the shoulder as he got up. 

On the couch, now with a glass of water, Vince continued his story.

“So… I was only on the run for about, I don’t know, less than half a day, before I was picked up by— I don’t know if they were the police, or military, or what, but they saw I was cuffed, that I was clearly on drugs, had no passport, and they threw me in prison.” 

“Jesus.”

“I remember even less of what happened there.” Vince leaned his head against Frank’s shoulder. “I guess I must’ve been going through withdrawal. I remember at some point starting to… starting to feel like days had beginnings, middles, and ends again? And I wasn’t eating  _ well _ , but I was  _ eating _ , and mostly at least I wasn’t getting the shit beat out of me anymore.” 

He sipped his water.

“I don’t know exactly how long I was there, either, but then one day…” He shrugged, eyes very wide. “The prison got bombed. I guess there were a lot of political prisoners— and in the confusion, with one of the walls blown half open, I ran for it again.” 

Frank put his hand on Vince’s knee. He still flinched a little, but not as much this time.

“Since I wasn’t completely fucked up this time, I managed to make it to a small town. And that’s where things get…” He made an unreadable face, confusion and disgust and  _ reverence _ warring in his eyes. 

“Frank, you ever feel like you got some kind of sign from God?”

Frank made a low humming noise. “Vince, you know you and I aren’t totally on the same wavelength with the god stuff.” He rubbed the outside of Vince’s leg with the pad of his thumb. “But…” He sighed, and touched Vince’s crucifix at his chest. “I understand.”

Vince turned his head to look up at Frank’s face. 

“There’s something I’ve never told you, and…” He bit his lip. “I think you need to know, for the rest of what happened to make sense.”

“Okay.”

“I…” He sighed again. “You asked me something once that makes me think you might already have guessed, but… it’s not like we’ve talked much about… well. I was…” He picked his head up off Frank’s shoulder, leaning away from him slightly. “I was in love with Sonny.” He swallowed and added, quietly, as if Frank didn’t know who he was talking about, “Steelgrave.”

His eyes darted to the corners just for a second, long enough to glimpse Frank but not long enough to let him respond. “We were…  _ together _ , I guess. And I  _ know _ , I  _ know _ how wrong that is, and I  _ know _ I should’ve been fired on the spot, and I  _ know _ that he wasn’t a good man, and…” He took a deep breath in, looking over the top of Frank’s TV set, at a particularly riveting square inch of bare white wall. “But I loved him. And I think, I think in his own way he did really love me back.”

He glanced once again at Frank, stiff and withdrawn. “That’s why I bolted, with.” He made a face, nodding his head slightly, like he couldn’t quite say the words. “Lynchboro. And… if that baggage is a dealbreaker for you, I guess I want you to know now, and not… not have it come out six months from now and make you hate me.”

“Vince…” Frank turned to look square at his friend’s face, white with fear and shame and disgust. “I… I knew. Not for sure, I guess, but I… I can’t pretend to say I fully understand, but… you can’t help who you fall in love with.” He shrugged, trying to affect a casual posture he wasn’t feeling inside. He gave Vince a weary stare and added, fully facetious, “If you  _ could _ , I wouldn’t have married an alcoholic, and I wouldn’t be attracted to men.” He put his arm around Vince. “I was always afraid to bring it up with you, but… I guess I’ve known since it happened.”

Vince finally met his eyes, pouty and defensive. 

“You’re still okay with the idea of being with me, knowing who my last boyfriend was?”

“Long as it wasn’t Lococco,” Frank joked. 

Vince smiled on one side of his mouth, eyes crinkling closed.

“Probably shouldn’t tell you I made a pass at Bobby Travis one night after you dumped me the first time, then.” 

Frank thwacked Vince in the arm with the backs of his fingers. “Alright, I get it, you’re a feral tomcat and I better treat you right or you’ll leave me for the next person who smiles at you, noted.” Vince grinned and Frank sighed. “Tell me how Steelgrave fits into El Salvador.”

“When I told Roger this part he asked if I had been hallucinating, which…”

“Is exactly what you want to hear when you’ve just gotten over withdrawal?”

“Y’know, in a weird way, it was?” Vince’s shoulders loosened slightly. “I had been thinking maybe I  _ was _ hallucinating. Like everything after getting away from Ruiz and Pina was just chemicals flooding my brain as I died, or something. Roger asking kind of snapped me out of it, almost— y’know, why would I hallucinate being asked if I was hallucinating?”

Honestly, Frank felt like, if he were in that position, being asked if he were hallucinating would make him feel  _ worse _ , but he wasn’t going to say anything that might make Vince feel any more tenuous about his grip on reality. 

“So… I roll into this tiny little town that only has one long-distance phone, and it’s at the police station. And after I figure there’s no way I’m calling anyone or getting anywhere without a little scratch, I go to the local bar, and ask if they could use any help with anything.” He shook his head slightly, still incredulous. “And the moment the bartender goes back in the kitchen to check if they have any jobs I could do, this man sitting at the end of the bar turns and looks at me and squints, and the first thing I think is— ‘he’s Mano Blanco, and he’s going to bring me back, and—’ and before I can bolt, he stands up and says, I shit you not,  _ ‘Terranova, is that you?’ _ ” 

“He walks over and shakes my hand and tells me I look like shit, and it finally dawns on me why he looks so familiar— he used to work for Sonny.” 

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m dead serious. He had been a lieutenant for Sonny’s father, but he’s only maybe ten, fifteen years older than Sonny is— was, so he ended up being pretty friendly with him. Decent guy. I met him mostly at a couple of parties, big events— he left before any of the shit that went down at Sonny’s wedding, I think Sonny said something about him fleeing drug charges unrelated to the family business.”

Vince sipped his water. “Thing is, I always got the feeling he…  _ knew _ , right? About me and Sonny. I kind of thought he might be. Well, y’know. Actually gay.” He gave Frank a look, eyebrows tilted upwards and askew, like this was some kind of wildly scandalous bit of trivia. Like he hadn’t just been talking about how he had an affair with the head of a crime family. Or hadn’t just been telling Frank that he wanted to be  _ out _ to their friends and family. Frank catalogued this incongruity without comment. 

“So, he throws his arms around me and says he heard about Sonny and was so sorry, which was, let me tell you, the weirdest punch to the gut,  _ jesus _ — and… well, he asked me why I was there and why I looked like I had just crawled out of a thresher, and…” Vince pursed his lips slightly, eyes still wide in disbelief. “I snapped back into cosa nostra mode and told him a version of how I got there that  _ didn’t _ involve being a federal agent. He told me about why he was in El Salvador— which was illegal reasons, of course—, and… and I asked him if might be able to get me in touch with someone back in the states.” He looked at Frank apologetically. “I couldn’t call you, no matter how much I wanted to. I knew at that point the CIA was involved, and… well, I wasn’t going to tell Samuele Barese I needed to talk to the feds.”

Frank squinted his eyes shut hard, unbelieving. “Wait, you’re telling me your guardian angel was _ Sam ‘Pruning Shears’ Barese? _ ”

Vince nodded guiltily. “Frank… he fixed me up with cash, a place to stay. He found me Roger. And Roger’s how I got home.” He shook his head, looking down into his glass. “For a long time… after everything that happened with Sonny, I… I convinced myself that I could just move on. That I could forgive myself for Sonny’s death, because everything I was doing I was doing in the name of ‘justice,’ and… I guess, that he… he made his own choice. But…” He gave Frank a long, hard look, eyes damp and red-rimmed. “He’s dead because of me, and… more than once now, I’m alive because of him.”

Frank found himself very still, feet pinned to the floor, hands flat on his lap. All he could say was, quietly, on a breath out, “…Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

They sat, side by side, in a silence that quickly grew from despondent to uncomfortable. 

Frank had never gotten that close to any of the men he had taken down, but he was by nature less trusting and more cynical than Vince. No matter how talented of an actor he was, so much of Vince’s charm came from how genuine he was— how willing to assume the best of people, how quick to drop perceived guards. This made him the perfect undercover operative— with a very limited shelf life. This had been inevitable from the moment Vince stepped out of prison. You needed to be a little immoral yourself to take down the thoroughly immoral; Vince was… mostly good, at heart.

So Frank simply put out his hand, fingers outstretched, in the space between them. Vince slotted his fingers between Frank’s and squeezed. 

“I should’ve told you sooner. About Sonny.”

Frank shook his head, stroking the side of Vince’s hand with his thumb. “You  _ would _ have told me sooner if I had given you any indication that I was going to take it well. I spent a long time behaving like I didn’t care about you, Vince. I can’t pretend that wasn’t the case.” 

Silence prevailed; Vince’s answer to this was simply to look at their hands. 

After a while, he sighed. “I kind of hated you back then,” Vince admitted. 

“I’m aware,” Frank admitted. “And at least half the time I probably deserved it.”

“Seventy-five percent,” Vince muttered, squeezing Frank’s hand. “You’re kind of an asshole.”

Frank pursed his lips slightly and nodded, looking at Vince from below his eyelids. “Guilty.” 

Vince’s head lolled to the side, and he breathed out with an audible groan. 

“I hate this.” He gestured at the two of them with his free hand, and Frank’s stomach dropped. “I just wanna wake up tomorrow and feel like… you and I can just start from there, y’know? Forget all this  _ shit _ . Not have to… replay every shitty thing we ever said to each other.” 

“I agree. I just want to be able to be happy you’re alive.” He paused, very briefly, psyching himself up to say something he needed, but didn’t want. “And you know, you  _ know _ , Vince, I don’t like to talk about… relationships.  _ Feelings _ . But I let Jenny almost kill herself refusing to talk about it. And you and I aren’t gonna last a month if we just posture, try to see who the biggest man in the room is.” He shrugged, feeling distinctly like his dinner was trying to crawl back out the wrong way. “We’re gonna kill each other, whether it’s inch by inch like with Jenny, or whether we wake up one day and strangle each other because we both have testosterone poisoning.”

Vince watched Frank appraisingly as he spoke. At the end, he blinked, almost catlike, and half-smiled. 

“Y’know, that’s what Amber accused me of— testosterone poisoning,” he chuckled. He ducked his head down towards his chest, squishing his mouth over to one side, eyebrows coming together. “Frank, you think it’s even possible for two guys like us—” He tipped his chin back up to clarify. “Not just two guys in general, I mean, I assume gay men talk to each other—”

Frank snorted. He had to wonder— and not that he had much experience in this department, either, but— had Vince ever actually spoken to another queer man who wasn’t a criminal or a closeted cop? 

“But like, two guys who wouldn’t talk to their  _ wives _ about shit, either, y’know? Is there any way that can work?” 

“As mentioned, maybe with extensive therapy,” Frank joked. 

Now it was Vince’s turn to laugh, quiet and self-effacing.

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted. “I really don’t. I don’t know how to be in a relationship with a man. I barely know how to be in a relationship with a woman.”

Hell. It still felt like something was wrong with him to even admit to himself that he  _ really _ ,  _ honestly _ had that kind of feelings for Vince. Every time he inched close to that idea, each of the times he’d now said it out loud— that he  _ loved him,  _ romantically— something in his brain seemed to kind of… flash the lights on and off, as if to say,  _ hello? what? that can’t be right. Try adjusting the dial. Flip the batteries around and put them back in the other way. _

“But…” He swallowed. But when he thought about what it could  _ mean _ — waking up next to Vince without the guilt and the shame and the need to cover his tracks, being able to just go have dinner somewhere together and not have to pretend there was some reason for a hood and a fed to be meeting like that, even just letting Vince put his arm around him in public and not immediately pulling away— it seemed… worth it. He gave Vince a quiet, serious look. “But we’re doing okay at it tonight, aren’t we?”

Vince nodded, a tiny little bob of his head, and then nodded again, more forcefully. He looked at Frank with a warm, powder blue clarity. And then he smiled, mischievous and glittering, like he hadn’t just spent the last few months in hell. “We’re gonna fight all the time, huh?”

“I don’t really think being  _ romantic partners _ is going to change that part of our relationship.”

“ _ ‘Romantic partners,’ _ jeez, there’s gotta be a better term than that.”

“There isn’t,” Frank shook his head. “‘Boyfriend’ makes it sound like we’re teenyboppers, and ‘longtime companion’ makes it sound like we’re widows who moved in together when our husbands never came back from the war.”

“‘Hi,’” Vince laughed, “‘This is my domestic partner Frank,’ god.” He shifted on the couch, closer to Frank. “Y’know, I’ve… always known I was into guys. I was  _ eleven _ when I asked Pete if he ever had, y’know. Thoughts. About other boys. But I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about all the extra bullshit you gotta deal with  _ on top _ of all the regular relationship bullshit when you love a guy.” 

Frank’s eyebrows lifted and his mouth twisted. “Vince, you know how much shit we’re gonna get for this, right?”

“After the last few months, merely dealing with bigots sounds like a pleasure cruise.” Vince shrugged. “You know I’ve punched guys out for less. And besides, most of my old friends stopped talking to me when I went to jail, so I’m used to the social pariah thing.”

They both sighed, looking off in opposite directions.

After a while, Frank let go of Vince’s hand, and stood up.

“Vince?” 

“Yeah?”

“You wanna play  _ Duck Hunt _ ?”

Vince grinned, nodded, and rubbed his whole face with his hands, sighing. 

Frank walked over to the TV and went to flip on Drake’s eternally banished Nintendo. “Wait, actually— there’s a new one, hold on—” He plugged a cartridge into the system and flipped the TV over to channel 3. 

Vince raised an eyebrow as the title appeared. “Since when does Mario practice medicine?”

“I don’t think he has a license.” He tossed a controller to Vince. “It’s like  _ Tetris _ with pills.”

“Who  _ makes _ these games?” 

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna kick your ass.” 

“Hey,” Vince laughed, “What happened to talking it out, no ‘biggest man in the room contests?’”

“Hey, I can’t be touchy-feely all the time. Now are you gonna let me kick your ass, or are you chicken?”

“We’ll see about that,” Vince sneered, leaning forward on the couch.

In reality, very little ass-kicking occurred. Neither of them were very good at the game, and after a while, they both started to doze off. They fell asleep with the TV on, upright, shoulders together, heads rolled back against the couch. 

It was the best night of sleep Frank had gotten since before they had gone to Lynchboro.


	2. Vinnie

Vinnie woke up on a knife’s edge, panicked, sweaty, and ready to rip someone’s throat out. He looked around, eyes darting across the room, his whole body tense, hands automatically out to the sides, ready to push away anyone or anything too close. Except— 

He wasn’t tied down. He wasn’t on a prison cot. He was in Frank McPike’s house, and— 

And Frank was asleep beside him, mouth open, glasses askew, still in his half-buttoned dress shirt. 

Vinnie touched his own face, and then touched Frank’s leg. He took a deep breath and looked at his watch, and then grabbed the mostly empty glass of water on the side table and drained it. He counted backwards from ten, breathing out slowly, and then stood up and turned off the TV, still on from last night. The soft static click as the screen went black, coupled with the drone of Frank softly snoring, pulled Vinnie’s heartbeat down into comfortable territory. He touched the inside of his elbow absentmindedly, and bit the inside of his lip. 

As quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Frank, he walked over to the window and looked out on the suburban street, patches of snow still peppering the ground. A small beige sedan drove by. He could hear birds outside, and the quiet dripping of melting snow onto the walkway outside. He had a slight headache— vodka. His mouth tasted sticky and acrid. His neck and shoulders were a little stiff from sleeping on the couch.

He was… really here. 

Still breathing with a carefully practiced slowness, he walked into the kitchen and washed out the coffee pot, and set coffee to brew. He put the pots and pans and dishes from last night in the sink and the dishwasher respectively, and then he went to go brush his teeth. His toothbrush was still in Frank’s medicine cabinet. 

In the light of day, he wondered if Frank would still have the courage to say he loved him. 

As he was rinsing his mouth, he heard something topple, a loud rustling, and a bleary— 

“Vince?”

Followed by a suddenly panicked— 

“Vince!” 

Vinnie spat and yelled back, “I’m in the bathroom!”

A moment later, Frank peered his head around the corner, rubbing at his eyes under his glasses. He blinked stickily and opened his mouth wide before rubbing at his jaw with the pad of his thumb. “Morning.”

“Morning.” Vinnie put his toothbrush back in the cup. 

“For a second there…” Frank shook his head, leaning back against the wall. “I thought I had dreamt everything.”

Vinnie reached out and pinched Frank’s cheek. “I’m here, flesh and blood.”

Frank swatted his hand away, and then grabbed him tight around the wrist. Vinnie felt himself flinch, and hoped Frank didn’t notice. Frank did notice. He loosened his grip and apologized. 

“Sorry.” He flashed his teeth guiltily, with an uncomfortable edge of pity. “I was just going to—” He brought Vinnie’s palm to his lips and kissed it, maintaining eye contact as he did. 

Vinnie felt a stab of longing, and the immense desire to push Frank back against the wall and have his way with him. He resisted the urge. Frank had been right last night when he suggested talking needed to happen first… and honestly, Vinnie still wasn’t sure he believed Frank wouldn’t decide they needed to go back to being just friends for ‘their own good’ again the moment he thought too deeply about what they were doing.

He swallowed his want. “I made coffee.”

Frank raised one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth rising ever so slightly. “Thanks.” He followed Vinnie out into the living room. “I’m gonna call in— if you want breakfast, there’s bread, but it’s stale. I need to go grocery shopping.”

“You got eggs?”

“Sorry. Last eggs I bought went bad.” Picking up the receiver, he scratched at his beard. “Jenny won’t let Drake eat sugary stuff, so there’s Cap’n Crunch somewhere, I think. Might also be stale.” He dialed the phone.

Vinnie took the slightly limp loaf of pre-sliced bread on the counter out of its bag and stuck two pieces in the toaster. He proceeded to look for butter or jam or  _ something _ while Frank talked to the new boss.

“Hey, yeah,” Frank feigned a loud, uncomfortable swallow, “I don’t know if, if I ate something bad or what but…” He made a gagging noise. “Sorry, I— I’ve been up all night worshipping at the porcelain altar, and I don’t feel any better this morning.” He nodded to no one. “It  _ is _ going around, yeah.” He nodded again, and then groaned, vaguely. “I gotta go—” He burped loudly, and Vince bit his lip not to laugh. “Just tell Santana I— I might not pick up right away if he calls, alr—” He slammed the phone down and raised his eyebrows at Vinnie, an evil smirk on his lips. 

“Stomach flu?”

“Didn’t you hear? It’s going around.”

Vinnie buttered his toast, glancing up at Frank. “If you don’t need me to rub your belly or get you some alka seltzer, you mind if I shower?”

“Go ahead. You have a change of clothes?”

Vinnie nodded and stuffed a corner of toast in his mouth. “I made Roger grab me a suitcase.” 

Frank glanced around the kitchen. “Where is it?”

“In your bedroom.”

“Bold,” Frank pronounced, his eyes sleepy and amorous. 

“Well, I knew you wouldn’t say no to me staying if I just made myself at home.”

“I wouldn’t say no no matter what, Vince.” 

Objectively, Vinnie knew that was true. That Frank would never  _ abandon _ him no matter what else happened between them. But he needed to hear him say it, the same as he was going to need him to keep saying ‘ _ I love you’ _ before he could trust that there wasn’t an addendum of ‘ _ until it’s inconvenient to do so _ .’

He jammed the rest of his toast in his mouth and asked, through a morass of crumbs, “You still gonna tell Uncle Mike we’re getting pinned?”

Frank shot Vinnie a look of irritated amusement. “I think I might phrase it differently, but if you’re on board…” 

There was a slight hint of desperation in his voice and his eyes, and for a second Vinnie mistook it as reticence. In actuality, it was more like pleading: He needed to hear that Vinnie wasn’t stringing him along. That putting himself out there wasn’t going to get him hurt, either. 

“I want him to know.” Vinnie shrugged. “I think he deserves to be the first person we tell.”

“Me too.” 

Frank gave Vinnie a gentle pat on the back as he made his way to the bedroom. He picked up a t-shirt and jeans— he didn’t love the idea of parading around half-naked in front of Frank  _ quite _ yet— and headed into the bathroom. Slipping off his rumpled, slept-in clothes, he started breathing to a timer again. He counted an inhale of two, an exhale of four, pausing between them. When his heartbeat slowed enough to contemplate getting in the shower, he turned the water on and stepped over the lip of the tub. 

With the water running over his chest, Vinnie’s heart spiked again. He let his hands drop to his sides and, once more, breathed in slowly, breathing out even longer. His body hadn’t felt like it belonged to him in months. He was covered with new lines and splotches, raw pink and ridged white, and he had aches and pains in places he had never had before. He felt like he was living in someone else’s shell— a dream consciousness in foreign flesh. His heart hammered against his ribs at noises, smells, memories, and he flinched every time someone touched him. He lost his train of thought and panicked at ghosts, he saw things in the corners of his vision, and he— 

It was part of why he had called Roger and not Frank. Yeah, part of it had been security concerns. The last thing he would’ve wanted was for Frank to end up part of a US counterinsurgency coverup, jobless and disgraced. But he had also needed someone who was going to know how to deal with a traitor body, someone who had had his whole world fragmented into broken funhouse mirrors and survived. They were all broken— but, if Frank had been ground down over time, filed into a shape that no longer fit where it was supposed to, Roger had been shattered. Vinnie needed someone who might be able to help him start gluing his own shards together. Someone who had done it before. 

And he was here, and he was still full of fractures and dents and pinhole leaks, but at least he was on his feet. 

He ran his hands down his soapy stomach and tried to think about Frank’s arms around him, the way he had kept taking his hand last night, the kiss he had ghosted against his palm this morning. He felt himself smoothing out, blood pounding against his veins less violently, stomach settling. With a little time, with his friends, with his family, with Frank, maybe he could… maybe he’d be okay. Eventually.

Assuming the last few people who loved him didn’t decide he was too much to deal with, shattered and shacked up with a man. 

He got out of the shower and dried himself off. As he was pulling his jeans on, the sound of the front door swinging open outside caused his whole body to tense. He listened at the bathroom door, frozen, almost crouching, like a wounded animal. 

“Jeez,” he heard, familiar and warm and heavy with concern, “You look like you slept in your clothes. I hope that’s not the surprise.”

Vinnie relaxed, covering his mouth as he shook with relief. Uncle Mike. 

“I hope you don’t think I’m so far gone that I’d call you over to see my poor wardrobe choices.”

Vinnie quietly finished getting dressed, listening to their conversation.

“So what’s this surprise? Smells like— coffee and… onions in here. You making me breakfast?”

“In your dreams,” Frank grumbled, a whiny tinge to his low voice.

“You have someone over last night?” 

“You could say that.”

“Frank… what the hell is this all about?”

“I don’t even know where to begin, Uncle.”

Vinnie opened the door to the bathroom and leaned casually against the doorframe, watching Dan’s face go from confusion to horror to disbelief to welling tears. 

He grinned and waved. “Oh, hey Uncle Mike.”

Vinnie had never seen Dan run before, but he was across the living room and squeezing Vinnie’s shoulders so fast that he might as well have teleported. 

“Vinnie!” 

Frank exhaled loudly. “Oh, thank  _ god _ you see him, too.”

Dan’s head whipped towards Frank. “How the hell was this not ‘urgent?’”

Vinnie took Dan’s shoulders in his hands and grinned at him. “That’s my fault. I told him it could wait.” 

“How the hell are you alive?” 

Even though he knew the question was coming— that it was going to be everyone’s question, every time— his innards still went cold. He opened his mouth, brows furrowed, and managed to squeak out, “I…” 

Frank stepped in. “I’ll give you the cliff’s notes version, Dan. But he’s okay, and it’s not a secret that he’s alive or anything. Come on,” he gestured towards the kitchen with his head. “Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

Seated around the little kitchen table, coffee poured, Dan sat with his hand over his mouth. His eyes glistened. 

“Vinnie, I’ve never been so happy to see a dead man in my life.” He swallowed and blinked, managing not to dissolve into full on tears.

Vinnie shrugged, playing cool so he wouldn’t start crying again himself. “I look pretty good for a corpse, I think.”

Dan pointed his thumb at Frank, eyes still on Vinnie. “You know, from day one this asshole refused to believe you were really dead. I wasn’t as tough as him. I just kept thinking, you’d  _ have _ to have found some way to contact us if you were alive.” The corner of his mouth twitched sideways and his cheeks scrunched up. He wiped at one eye with the heel of his hand. “I’m so damn glad I was wrong.” 

“I wanted to,” Vinnie swallowed, “I just…” 

Frank put his hand on Vinnie’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. 

“Vince already had to tell this once,” he explained. “And we fell asleep on the couch last night talking about all of it— neither of us got a real solid night’s sleep. So, uh. I’m sure he won’t mind if I summarize.” He squeezed Vinnie’s shoulder and told a heavily truncated version of his story, focusing mostly on his concerns about the CIA and how everything that had happened on their end dovetailed with what had happened to Vinnie. He omitted the more emotionally vulnerable bits, but made clear Vinnie’s intentions to leave undercover work for good. As he was telling the story, he silently slid his hand under the table and placed it on Vinnie’s knee, palmside up. Vinnie slotted his fingers into Frank’s and squeezed.

Dan shook his head throughout, grimacing and occasionally wiping silently at his eyes and nose. At the end he reached across the table and grabbed Vinnie’s fingers, squeezing them hard before letting go again. 

“I don’t know how to begin to tell you how happy I am to have you back, Vin. Or how… goddamn furious I am that all of this happened to you.” He rubbed his thumb up and down the handle of his mug, looking into his mostly empty coffee cup like it might contain the solutions to all the world’s hurt and injustice. “Are you…  _ okay _ ?”

Vinnie took a long time to answer, sipping his coffee to give himself time to choose his words. “I don’t know. The doctor in San Juan wanted me to see a psychologist once I was home, but I…” He thought about Mike Stowiecki, and the therapist he went to with Amber, and the psych eval that turned into his own personal hell back in ‘89. “My track record with shrinks is pretty iffy.”

“Even if it’s just to get a confirmation that you  _ are _ okay, it’s not a bad idea, Vinnie.” Dan continued with a crooked expression of gentle pity. “And we could both go with you, if you wanted.” 

Vinnie nodded, buoyed by Frank giving his hand a soft squeeze under the table. 

“I’m just happy to be home, for now.”

“I’m sure,” Dan grinned, lines forming around his eyes. “I bet you can’t wait to sleep in your own bed, huh?”

Vinnie hoped he hadn’t gone as pale as he felt. The thought of trying to sleep in that house— where they’d ripped him naked out of the shower— was bowel-churning. He could feel his palms going clammy, his face frozen in a mask of neutrality.

“Actually,” Frank cleared his throat, “Vince is probably gonna stay here for a while.”

Dan’s smile vanished. “Oh, god, I— I wasn’t thinking. You’re probably not…” He scrunched his eyes and mouth shut, visibly berating himself. “I’m sorry. Well, if you get sick of Francis here, you can always come stay with me for a little while.”

“Thanks, Uncle Mike,” Vinnie mumbled, barely audibly. 

“So,” Frank began, blinking and frowning, “the thing is, well, if… if we’re already dropping bombshells here, I uh.” He took his glasses off for a second and looked at them, and finding them apparently clean enough, immediately put them back on. “I should probably explain that part of why Vince is staying  _ here _ , specifically, is that, uh.” He swallowed, unable to move on.

At least he was trying. 

“Are we being watched? Is someone still after him?”

“Not as far as we know, no, it’s…” Frank took a deep breath and looked over in the direction of the fridge. “The thing is, Vince and I are… together. In the sense of… queer.” He said it more like it was an insult than a label, but, goddamn, he said it. “As in a… very… dysfunctional couple.”

Dan snorted, head folding down to his chest. Chuckling, he concurred, “Yeah, you told me they had said you were getting a little too cozy to keep working together. That gonna be Vinnie’s out? Can’t work for the FBI if he’s gay?”

Vinnie held up his hand, palm to palm, fingers interlocked with Frank’s. He sort-of smiled, like a nervous ape with its teeth bared, and quietly amended, “Uncle Mike… we’re not joking.”

Eyes widening, Dan’s face was like a skipping record player. His head pulled slightly to the right, chin leading, and he blinked, once, twice, eyebrows furrowing and unfurrowing, mouth opening to an alphabet of unvoiced letters before pulling his chin back to center and nodding. 

He blinked a soft, bewildered flutter of blinks and offered, “Congratulations?”

Now it was Vinnie and Frank’s turn to laugh. Frank buried his face in his hand, looking down at the surface of the table. 

Vinnie smirked. “I think ‘good luck’ might be more appropriate, considering who you’re talking to.”

Dan’s mouth opened and closed again, his eyebrows like caterpillars on acid. 

“Since… when?”

Frank seemed largely incapacitated, the color of an undercooked steak. 

Vinnie shrugged and answered. “Well.  _ Officially _ , yesterday, but, uh. On and off since a while back.”

“Just after Jenny left me,” Frank grumbled, nose resting on the backs of his fingers, mouth hidden behind his fist. “Then not for a while, not until… uh.”

“D.C.,” Vinnie provided.

Frank nodded. “Then off again from…” He cleared his throat, looking very much like he might dissolve into a foamy red mist if a breeze blew through. However, he was holding Vinnie’s hand still— so tightly Vinnie was nervous that letting go might cause him to melt onto the floor. 

“From when I bolted to…”

“Now.”

Leaning his elbow on the table, forefinger pressed to his lips, Dan’s eyebrows came to rest in a heavy crinkle between his eyes. 

“I’m sorry… don’t take this the wrong way but…” He tilted his head to the side slightly, squinting, and gestured outwards with his hand. “ _ You two _ are gay?”

“Not exactly,” Frank murmured, fingers pressed into his eyes behind his glasses. 

“I mean, we’re both attracted to women, still,” Vinnie explained, faring marginally better than Frank only because, hey, Dan didn’t seem to be overtly disgusted, just confused. “We just…” 

He looked at Frank, whose eyes, partially obscured behind his glasses, snapped to Dan before they made it to Vinnie’s face.

Frank’s mouth was a hard line, his eyes crunching halfway shut. In an overflow of words, like an unclogged valve, he explained, “Dan, I know this sounds unbelievable, believe me. I certainly never pictured myself as… as a, as being— having—” He rubbed his mouth, twisting his head slightly. “Falling in love with a man. But I am.” His eyes darted back to Vinnie. “I’ve fucked up too many times already, I’m not losing Vince again.” He looked off to the side, red enough that Vinnie thought back to his comment about the salt in the pasta water. “And if that’s a problem, then…” 

He made a face like he was trying to come up with a threat and then looked away again. 

Dan’s brow unfurrowed, and his mouth quirked to one side. “It’s not a problem, Frank, it’s just a surprise.” He looked between the two of them. “Are you… happy about this? Because you both seem a little freaked out, to be honest.”

“We are,” Vinnie and Frank answered simultaneously. They looked at each other.

“Freaked out,” Vinnie grinned. 

“And happy,” Frank muttered, hiding his smile behind his hand.

Dan offered his hand out for Frank to shake. “Then I’m happy for you.” Frank tentatively took Dan’s hand, apparently unable to make eye contact while making physical contact. Dan shook Vinnie’s hand next, firm and paternal. “Although I guess I’m not really looking forward to being a third wheel next time we have a boys’ weekend.” 

“It’ll be better than last year, at least,” Frank shrugged. “I had just dumped him—”

“For the first time,” Vince added, giving Dan a thousand-mile stare.

“—the last time we went to your cabin all together.”

Dan squinted, mouth partly open on one side. “Wait, when I was dealing with all that stuff with Lauren?” 

Frank and Vinnie nodded in tandem.

“God, no wonder you were both so bitchy that trip.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause you were Little Mary Sunshine,” Frank bit, sarcasm rolling off him like a fog. 

Dan ignored this. “Also, ‘dumped him for the first time—’ how many times have you dumped my nephew, Frank?”

Vince held up two fingers, then three, then wobbled his hand back and forth to indicate uncertainty. Frank’s eyes drifted off to the fridge again.

“I won’t dump him again, if that’s any consolation,” he grunted. “At the  _ time _ , I was… scared.” He glanced at Vince, eyes soft on his face. “I am still scared,” he admitted, sighing. “But… you don’t get this many third chances.”

Dan looked between both of them almost appraisingly, but he still radiated a vague sense of puzzlement. He opened his mouth and closed it again, scrunching his lips to one side. He looked like he had a question he was concerned he shouldn’t ask.

“You can say whatever it is you’re thinking, we won’t call the ACLU,” Vinnie quipped, pretending he wasn’t steeling himself for a knife in his heart. So far Uncle Mike had taken it very well, but shock may have been a contributing factor to that. 

Squinting one eye shut, Dan shrugged his shoulders very slightly. “Well… I’ve always known you two loved each other. But I figured it was…” He trailed off. 

Vinnie bit the inside of his lip. He could see where this was going— a typical straight guy concern— he was worried that if the affection Frank and Vinnie shared wasn’t platonic, then maybe the affection Frank or Vinnie had for  _ him _ wasn’t platonic, either. 

Dan rubbed at his beard. “If you’re both into chicks, then how do you  _ know _ it’s not just… familial love, or something?” 

Taken completely by surprise at this significantly weirder question, Vinnie immediately started laughing, wheezy and high pitched. He covered his face with his hand and hoped Dan didn’t think he was laughing  _ at _ him.

“Dan,” Frank began, pitched up with facetious judgement, “Do you really need us to write you an essay on how we know the feelings we’re experiencing  _ aren’t brotherly _ ? Because I could, with citations and diagrams, but I  _ don’t _ think you’d like to read it.”

Cheeks puffing out, Dan’s eyebrows crept upwards and his gaze landed on the table. “Ask a stupid question…”

Still grinning, Vinnie managed to at least stop laughing. “Don’t be an asshole to the one person who might still want to associate with us, Frank.” 

“No worries, Vin,” Dan laughed, “I’ve had many years to get used to him being an asshole. This will be easier to get used to than that.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Frank griped, lifting his coffee mug in a sarcastic toast.

“Fuck you, too,” Dan smiled, doing the same. 

From there, Vinnie knew he had nothing to be worried about— he wasn’t going to lose his Uncle Mike over this. His ribs unclenched, and he felt like he could exhale. Now the only one who  _ really _ mattered was his mom— with everyone else, if they couldn’t deal, then they could just fuck right off. 

Dan made a mildly concerning expression, just a quick dip of his eyebrows and a twitch of his mouth. “You know Campbell will probably take this as an excuse to fire you, though, right?”

“Well,” Frank looked at Vinnie for confirmation. They hadn’t exactly talked over whether or not they should still keep things fully hush-hush in a professional sense, but if everyone else knew, eventually it would come up at the job, too.

Vinnie took the lead, not wanting Frank to think his ultimatum had been nuclear. “I’m not asking him to march into the DA’s office with a Friends of Dorothy t-shirt on. I mean, I want people to know, but I’m not stupid enough to think outing yourself to the FBI is a productive political statement.”

Frank did look relieved, but he quickly added, “But if Campbell finds out, so be it. If I lose everything else but get to keep him,” he pointed at Vince with his thumb, pursing his lips and looking at the table, “I think that’s a worthwhile trade.” 

Feeling his face, his neck, even his chest start to go hot, Vinnie swallowed. That— that was the last piece of the puzzle slotting into place. The last little grain of truth he needed to hear to know that Frank really, truly was serious. That this time, if they tried, and they split, it was going to be because they both sucked at interpersonal relationships, not because trying itself was too hard or too harrowing. 

“Sorry, Uncle Mike,” he apologized ahead of time, and then leaned over and kissed Frank hard on the cheek.

“Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve seen you kiss him,” Dan shrugged, and then his eyebrows hitched upwards. “Come to think of it…” 

“Shoulda seen it sooner?” Vinnie teased.

“Yeah, but also wondering about one of my other nephews and his friend.” He pointed at Frank. “Oh. Speaking of other nephews, I’m assuming based on the hour and your state of dress that you’re playing hookey today?”

Frank nodded. “We’re going to go see Mrs. Terranova and let her know Vince’s alive.”

“But probably not the part where she’s not going to be getting grandkids,” Vinnie pretended to joke, veins icing over at the thought of his mother’s future tearful disappointment. 

Dan’s head wobbled from side to side. “I dunno, Vinnie, your ma’s a pretty big McPike fan these days.” He grinned at Frank. “Least you’re Catholic, right?”

“That’s it, I’m converting to Santeria,” Frank groused, getting up from the table with his coffee cup in hand. He pointed to Dan’s cup, eyebrows raised in question.

“I’m good, I gotta get back to Ground Control.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s what I was going to ask you— what should I tell Santana if he asks?”

“Stomach flu,” Frank answered, refilling both his and Vinnie’s cups. “When I’m miraculously recovered tomorrow we can let him in on the surprise.” 

“The alive part or the gay part?” Dan pushed off against the chair and the table, bringing himself to standing. 

Frank shrugged. “One should probably precede the other, but we’ll see.”

“Maybe that’s how we should do it with my mother,” Vinnie suggested. “You tell her we were in love before I died, and then  _ surprise _ , turns out I’m alive, so she can’t be too mad that I’m an unrepentant sinner.” 

“I’m sure she’ll take it better than you think. She loves you.” Dan circled the table and leaned over to put his arms around Vinnie’s shoulders. “ _ I  _ love you, like my own damn flesh and blood, you beautiful miracle.” He squeezed him fiercely, and Vinnie suppressed the growing sob at his core— he was so terrified that no one would ever want to  _ look _ at him again, knowing what he was, forget touch him, forget tell him they loved him. He wrapped his arms around Dan like he wasn’t merely a lifeguard, but a life preserver.

“Don’t tell anyone, but you’ve always been my favorite nephew.” He gave Vinnie a friendly faux-punch on the cheek, a paternal tap. “Frank, I hope you get over your flu soon.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

“This weekend, I’m taking you both out somewhere— we can toast to Vinnie, and,” he looked pointedly at Frank, “to your future happiness.” 

Vinnie and Frank both followed him to the door, stopping for another round of hugs before he left for work. As he pulled out of the driveway, Frank turned to Vinnie with a puzzled expression.

“I think… he still likes us.”

“That’s kind of the feeling I’m getting, too.” 

Frank closed his eyes, face tight with concern. He breathed out slowly. “Thank god.”

Vinnie put his arm around Frank’s shoulder and leaned his head against his head. “He was the one I was most nervous about, other than my mom.”

“Same here, except substitute ‘Drake’ for ‘mom.’” 

“I love you, Frank.”

Frank’s head twitched to the side, and his eyes up to Vinnie’s face. A genuine, slightly shy smile replaced surprise inch by inch. 

“You have the worst taste in men of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“My father-in-law is an ex- _ don _ . Clearly it runs in the family.” 

“I love you, too, Vince.” Frank blinked, looking pleased and exhausted in equal turns. “However ill-conceived that notion may be.”

Vinnie pushed the bridge of his nose into Frank’s temple. “I’m gonna kiss you.”

Frank tilted his head so their noses were nearly touching, softer and more open than Vinnie thought he had ever seen him. He leaned his face, his nose, his lips to the side and took Frank’s face in his hand, fingers on his neck behind his ear, thumb ghosting along his cheekbone. He didn’t move in to brush their lips together until he had looked at him— given him a long, silent message, eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose. Frank, usually so reticent and evasive, held the gaze, his Atlantic blue eyes meeting Vinnie’s own. Vinnie touched their mouths together, and Frank’s eyes fluttered shut, and his lips parted for him. He slid his tongue against Frank’s lower lip, and Frank leaned his body in close. It was like a circuit that had been broken had had its fuse replaced, and the lights were back on.

The kiss was long, and it was crackling with intensity, but it wasn’t  _ urgent _ . Frank returned touch for touch, his chest against Vinnie’s chest, his arms wrapped almost lazily around his waist. Each unhurried sweep of his tongue against Vinnie’s sent heat shooting through his body like an arc welder, and as expected, the bristly friction of his beard against Vinnie’s skin was fuel on the fire. Vinnie reached down and gave Frank’s ass a hearty squeeze, pulling his hips closer to his own. He could feel Frank smile against his lips. 

They separated with a gentle bonk of noses. 

“Christ.” Frank fixed his glasses. He closed his eyes and swallowed. “I am going to need a very cold shower before we go see your mother.” 

Vinnie touched their lips together again, very softly.

“You know, we still probably shouldn’t get it on for a while, anyway.” His eyebrows quirked up. “Opening lines of communication and all that.”

Frank started to laugh, an almost menacing chuckle, like black earth. He crossed his arms, looking down at the floor.

“I don’t think it’s that ridiculous of an idea, Frank.”

“No, no,” he shook his head, still chortling darkly. “I think it’s an excellent idea, I just…” He looked back up at Vinnie and shrugged. “We’re really doing this.”

Vinnie’s stomach muscles clenched, and he felt his heart starting up its now-familiar quickstep. 

Frank brought his hand up to Vinnie’s face and he flinched, again. Vinnie felt himself coloring. 

“Hey, hey, I  _ want _ us to be really doing this— I’m not laughing at the idea of there being an  _ us _ , I’m laughing at…” He sighed, eyes rolling off to the side in embarrassment. “I’m laughing at  _ me _ . I’ve never done a damn thing in my life to  _ open lines of communication _ . I’m an emotional gravel pit. But here I am, mid-forties, divorced, enrolling in Human Relationships 101 with some,” he grabbed Vinnie’s cheek between his thumb and forefinger and pinched him half-affectionately, half-aggressively, “hot, smirky,  _ hooligan _ a decade my junior as the professor.” 

He crossed his ams again. “You know, never in my entire life have I thought of myself as— as  _ bisexual _ , not really, but for you, Vince, for you I would out myself to— I’d have it tattooed to my forehead.” 

“And that’s what I’m laughing at, Vince. That most men buy a Ferrari when they’re going through a midlife crisis.” He gestured outward with one hand, sweeping to the side from his chest. “And me,  _ me  _ of all people,  _ I’m _ learning how to  _ talk through my issues _ .”

The hammering in Vinnie’s chest slowed to a waltz. Frank was really trying. Something in him seemed to have been shaken loose— a product of any number of things— getting shot, having a traumatic brain injury, thinking his best friend was dead. He had always had a low tolerance for bullshit, but now he seemed fiercely determined to be as direct and unequivocal as a man could be. 

Vinnie grabbed his cheek in the same way Frank had just grabbed his, unable to say his own piece without making it a joke. “Seems like therapy is doing good for you, huh?” 

Frank pawed his hand off his face and grumbled, low and significantly less annoyed than he probably wanted to sound, “Go fuck yourself.” 

“What,” Vinnie teased, encircling Frank in his arms, “You wanna watch?”

“Ha, ha,” Frank responded, reddening like a sinner at mass. Nonetheless, Vinnie could feel him hooking his thumbs behind his back. Vinnie leaned in and kissed his forehead, just above his glasses. He was hardly going to tell Frank he was cute— he wouldn’t take that very well— but goddammit, Vinnie found him abso-fucking-lutely adorable. He had always been enchanted by people with some teeth to them, and Frank was like a rusty saw blade. He kissed him again on the cheek for good measure. 

Something clicked very suddenly as his lips brushed Frank’s temple. 

“Hey, wait a minute—” He leaned back slightly so he could look Frank in the eye. “Did you say ‘divorced?’”

Frank nodded. “We actually started meeting with lawyers not long after I got out of the hospital. Signed final papers just after coming home from Miami.”

“Jesus, she made you do that while you were dealing with Guzman and everything?”

“No,” Frank shook his head. “She said it could wait as long as I needed it to.” He sighed, looking off to the side again. “I insisted, which was probably masochism on my part, but now at least it’s over with and I don’t have to explain my  _ new boyfriend _ as part of the divorce proceedings.” 

Vinnie’s head tilted slightly. “How do you think Jenny’s going to take it, when the time comes?”

Frank’s eyes went distant, and he murmured with plasticine humor, “Well, she always did say I was married to the job.” He breathed out. “I’m going to shower. Think about what you might want for food— we can go to the grocery store after we see your mother.” He raised his eyebrows and half-smiled, and then made his way down the hall.

Well— it made sense that he might not want to talk about his ex wife’s reaction to him going queer all of a sudden. Even so, Vinnie found himself listless and nervous as soon as he heard the water turn on. He wandered into the kitchen to distract himself, poking through Frank’s cabinets and fridge. He needed just about everything; Vinnie surmised that he had been living on canned soup and Swanson Thanksgiving dinners for far longer than was probably safe for a man’s arteries. No wonder he was worried about salt. 

He started writing a list, thinking about how long they might need groceries for two. He didn’t want to overstay his welcome in Frank’s home, but at the same time, he couldn’t imagine sleeping in the place where he had been kidnapped. Roger had offered a place to crash, and he knew he could probably bum a bed off his mom and Aiuppo if he needed to, but he relished relying on either of those parties even less. He might have to resign himself to couch surfing for a while, especially until he was settled enough to start looking for a job. 

As much as he didn’t welcome the idea of therapy, if it got him back in his own damn house sooner, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Whistling broke his concentration as he jotted down  _ milk _ and  _ tomatoes _ ; the faintest hint of Frank’s soap on humid air drifted into the kitchen, and Vinnie wondered if it would be too soon to just announce he was moving in.

Well— maybe that was stupid, anyway, even if it weren’t presumptuous and  _ way _ too quick. After all, his house was bought and paid for long ago, and Frank was renting a bachelor bungalow. The smart thing to do would be to invite Frank to live with him— assuming  _ he _ could ever live in his own home again. 

Frank exited his bedroom in a sweater and jeans; Vinnie noted the lack of undershirt or turtleneck under the sweater and wanted badly to snake his hands up under it. He could picture himself sliding his jeans off and kissing along the fuzz on Frank’s stomach down to…

“Better not look at me like that in front of Carlotta,” Frank cautioned, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“I missed looking at you, Frank.” 

Frank inhaled sharply, blinking. “Alright. Let’s go try not to cause any nice old Italian ladies heart failure.” He grabbed his keys from the table. “You ready?”

Vinnie pocketed his grocery list and followed. 

In the car, they talked about food, and Frank’s current cases, and working with Santana, and Vinnie’s plans for work. There was a sense of normalcy to it that was almost frightening. Vinnie hadn’t experienced anything resembling ‘normal’ in months, and there wasn’t really anything  _ normal _ about normal with Frank, anyway. The same sense of unreality he had been fighting since waking up in an Salvadorean prison, sweating out probably heroin and coke and god knows what else dogged him; was it really possible that he was in Frank McPike’s car, on his way to see his mom, talking about groceries? Had he kissed Frank at the door an hour earlier? Had Frank fallen asleep on his shoulder last night? Had he told him he was in love with him, really and truly?

Frank put his hand on Vinnie’s knee. “Vince.”

“Hmm?” Vinnie snapped out of the spiral of self-doubt he was tumbling down. They were parked on the street in front of a swanky looking apartment building, across from an Italian bakery. Of course. The Don was hardly going to have an apartment in Greenpoint or Chinatown. 

“You want me to tell your mom what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Vinnie locked and unlocked the car door, looking out the window. “Probably.”

“How do you want me to play the part with Sonny’s friend? Same as with Uncle Mike?”

Frank had emphasized the coincidental nature of the meeting, and omitted anything about Vinnie’s guilt or his romance with Sonny. 

“Maybe just say it was someone I knew from a case. Ma hated Sonny so much I almost felt like she knew— one time she asked me if I ‘really cared for him’ and then told me I was an idiot when I said yes.”

“And then she went and married Aiuppo, huh?”

Vinnie set his teeth askew, eyebrows hitching upwards. “Aaand then she went and married Aiuppo.”

Looking deeply annoyed, Frank closed his eyes, lips crunching together. When he opened his eyes, he squeezed Vinnie’s knee tighter. “Someday… I want you to tell me.” He rubbed at his eye behind his glasses, looking out the window in the opposite direction as Vinnie. “About what happened with Steelgrave, really.”

Vinnie leaned on his palm against the window. “Why? There’s nothing that happened that’ll tell you anything new about the case.”

“I don’t care about the case,” Frank groused, accent thickening, voice briefly going a little high on the word ‘care.’ “I  _ want _ to know because you loved him, Vince. And that matters. I want you to… make me understand, I guess.”

What Vinnie wanted to say was—  _ thank you _ . The idea that Frank would be willing to hear him, finally, felt like one of his missing pieces slotting back into place. Loving Sonny had been unintentional, but it wasn’t something he could deny. Only two people had ever heard even the tamest version of the story of their relationship— Pete, who was now dead, and Roger, who had gotten the one-line summary version of the story. Frank knowing would… it would mean something. 

What Vinnie said was, “There are parts of that story I don’t think you’re going to want to hear.”

“So be it.” Frank shrugged. “If you’re comfortable telling, then I want to be told. Even if I don’t come out looking so hot in this particular tale.”

Vinnie snorted. “Sonny fucking  _ hated _ you, Frank.” He undid his seatbelt and swung open the car door. “I’d say he’s been rolling in his grave since the first time you n’ me got busy,” he sighed, stepping out onto the sidewalk, “But…” He shrugged, watching Frank do the same. “Running into Barese…” 

Frank leaned one arm on the top of the car, watching Vinnie across the peeling paint. 

“You don’t think he’d just be happy you’re happy?”

There was a beat, and then they both started laughing. Neither of them was naive enough to think  _ that _ was in character for him. Vinnie had loved Sonny— deeply, truly— but he also  _ knew _ the man. 

“Alright. Let’s go make my mom cry,” Vinnie grinned, and they went to ring the buzzer on the door. 

The voice on the other end was Aiuppo’s. “Who’s there?”

“Morning, Mr. Aiuppo, it’s McPike— is Carlotta home?”

“Buongiorno Francis. She is. Is this business? Should I call my lawyer?”

Frank rolled his eyes at Vinnie. Rudy Aiuppo had a bit of a soft spot for Frank— turning a blind eye to his ‘deportation’ and providing a blood transfusion tended to endear a person. Vinnie still hadn’t entirely forgiven Aiuppo for what had happened with the Commission, but he could appreciate that if he and Frank might eventually be coming out to a career mobster, at least the career mobster  _ liked _ his boyfriend.

“Friendly visit only, you can stop sending your men down to the tunnels.” 

Rudy buzzed them in.

On the way up the stairs, Vinnie pestered, “How is it that he gets the ‘he’s just an old man’ pass, but your own father doesn’t?”

Frank shrugged. “The Don’s never kicked my ass or called me a fairy?” 

“The idea that anyone would look at you and think ‘fairy’ is—”

Frank put his finger to his lips and tilted his head at an apartment door, number 308. He knocked, Vinnie standing off to the side, just slightly out of the line of sight of the peephole. The door swung open, the knob in the plump, spotted hand of Vinnie’s mother. She looked so, so tired. 

“Mrs. Terranova, I brought you a present.”

In the span of a second, her eyes widened to twin moons, her mouth opening jerkily, bit by bit, like someone was turning a stuck crank. Her hands were shaking at her sides, and then they were on Vinnie’s face, the paces between them crossed in an instant. 

“Vincenzo!”

“Hi, ma,” Vinnie smiled, already feeling the waterworks starting behind his eyes. He cupped his mother’s cheeks and kissed her forehead as she pawed him, hands over his face and shoulders like there was a secret code in braille on his skin. 

A few steps behind, Aiuppo grabbed Frank’s forearm. “He’s alive!?”

“Our boy’s alive,” Frank agreed, a deep, affectionate rumble. 

Carlotta buried her face in Vinnie’s chest, sobbing. Vinnie held the back of her head, tears dripping onto her grey curls. This was becoming almost a nostalgic activity— the surprise, the crying, the confirmation of his continued existence. Almost embarrassing.  _ Why are you making such a big deal?— it’s not like I died or something. _

“Come in, come in,” she keened, pulling Vinnie and Frank in and depositing them on the couch. She held Vinnie’s ears and kissed him on the forehead, tears streaming down her red cheeks, and then did the same to a very surprised Frank. 

She fussed and muttered exhalations of surprise and unintelligible affirmations of affection, Rudy behind her trying and failing to be surreptitious about his own feelings. When Carlotta’s words returned to her, she first took a deep breath in and pressed her clasped fingers to her mouth.

“For a mother to lose both her sons…” She shook her head. “I knew in my heart that God’s plan for you had to be different, Vincezo. I knew he wouldn’t take you both from me.” She leaned down and kissed Vinnie on the top of the head once more, choking back gasps and sniffles as he buried him against her chest. 

Reaching over to take Frank’s hand, she asked, tearfully, gratefully, “How did you find him? How did you bring my boy back to me?”

Frank shook his head. “I can’t take any credit.” He looked at Vinnie from the corners of his eyes, guilty, red-rimmed, and almost reverent. “He found his own way back.”

“Tell me,” Carlotta insisted, cupping Vinnie’s cheek. “Tell me everything.”

She sat back on the loveseat diagonal to the couch, leaning forward, the hem of her skirt nervous between her fingers. Rudy, standing off to the side, touched her cheek. 

“I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” 

She caught his fingers between her own as he left for the kitchen, giving him a look of almost painful tenderness. Vinnie understood, even if he couldn’t put away his disdain for Aiuppo’s methods. He understood with a depth Carlotta would never be able to grasp. 

“Well…” Vinnie started, his stomach immediately beginning to practice gymnastics. “Let me start by saying that… I’m okay, and I’m staying with Frank for a little while I get back on my feet, but everything is all set legally-speaking.” He grinned, cold and false. “I got a functional drivers’ license and everything, so you don’t need to go digging out my birth certificate or anything.” 

Carlotta nodded, dabbing at her eyes with one sleeve. “Wonderful, Vincenzo, wonderful. Thank you for helping him, Francis.” 

Frank raised his hands up in a  _ stop _ motion, looking down at the carpet, light green and plush. “Vince did all this himself, he just showed—” He paused, eyes darting to Vinnie. They hadn’t exactly discussed what the cover story was for why he found his way to Frank before his own family.

Honestly, Vinnie hadn’t even thought about how strange that might seem to an outside party before this very moment. 

He took over from Frank, awkwardly, explaining with a gentle lie, “I got in from Puerto Rico at one in the morning, and I figured I should check in with the people in charge of me before I scared the bejeezus out of you two in the middle of the night.” 

“Of course,” Carlotta snuffled, reaching to take Vinnie’s hand in her own. “But tell me, you’re not going to keep working for them— not after everything— are you?”

“No, ma,” Vinnie shook his head. “The OCB’s gone, you told Frank to tell everyone I was a fed— even if I wanted to, I couldn’t ever do undercover work again.”

Rudy came back and sat beside Carlotta on the loveseat, one hand on her back and the other on her leg. Vinnie could feel the inches between himself and Frank like a saw blade splitting a loaf of bread— he could do it, he could get through telling the story again, but— god, it would be so much easier if Frank could touch him, ground him while he was.

Carlotta squeezed his hand, tears starting in earnest again.

“How did you survive, Vincenzo?” She looked to Frank. “Is he safe? Could they do this again?”

“It’s fine,” Vinnie assured her, placing his other hand over hers. “Guzman’s dead, and he was the link between the CIA and Mano Blanco. Besides, I’m no good as a political pawn now that the US government knows I’m alive again.”

“And Mrs. Terranova, while you know as well as anyone that anyone who’s ever been involved in work relating to organized crime is never completely safe from retribution, as I’m sure your husband can attest, Vince will have around the clock protection for as long as we see fit, even if it has to be me waiting up at the door with a handgun.” His eyes darted to Vinnie’s face for a split second. “He won’t be able to spend too long in the dairy aisle without someone checking in on him.” 

Vinnie knew that this was absolute bunk from a federal perspective— the OCB was defunct, after all— and the absolute gospel truth from a Frank perspective. He was going to be on a very short leash for a while, and honestly, he was entirely alright with that. Frank could handcuff them together and that would be alright.

Actually, Vinnie realized, releasing his mother’s hands with a sudden pang of immense discomfort and guilt, the idea of Frank handcuffing him was not entirely an unattractive one, despite everything. Better than fucking criminals, but, well let it not be said that his interior fantasy life was boring.

He played all of it— his fear, his embarrassment, his guilt and shame as a punchline. He grinned and stretched his arms out, putting one arm around Frank’s neck and shoulders, oh-so-casual, absolutely not just desperate for the safety of his touch or anything. “I escaped a death squad and a Salvadorean prison. I’m like the boogey man to them, now, ma— they’re not coming after me.”

Frank leaned almost imperceptibly into him, not cozy, not noticeable from the outside— just a minute physical acknowledgement of what Vinnie was doing. A little  _ yes _ from his shoulders and the back of his hand, casually touching the side of Vinnie’s leg. Buoyed, he told an even softer version of the story that Frank had told to Dan— short and sweet, focused on the triumph of escape, omitting most of the drugs and torture and the part where he bludgeoned a man to death with a chair. While reciting these trials and tribulations, Aiuppo brought them all coffee and a plate of biscotti. (He wondered, briefly— could he have ever housebroken Sonny the way his mother had with Rudy? The man was downright  _ helpful _ . The only other time he had ever seen a Don  _ serve _ was in an X-rated sense, and Vinnie wasn’t half dumb enough to think Sonny wouldn’t have had him thrown in the Hudson if he had ever spilled  _ that _ information.)

His arm stayed on Frank’s shoulders the entire time. Just pals in the dugout, nothing more.

When he was done, his mother burst into tears again, stood up, and threw her arms around Vinnie once more. Vinnie patted her on the back with the arm that wasn’t around Frank, feeling his own throat start to go uncomfortably tight and raw. 

“Vincenzo,” she sobbed, kissing his forehead and cheeks. “My son, my baby boy…” She stood up and took a deep breath, face red and wet. “I don’t know whether you’re the unluckiest or the luckiest boy on the Earth, but I know I’m the luckiest mother.” She took Vinnie’s cheek in her hand. “When we go back to Arizona… you should come with us.”

“What?” Vinnie laughed. He took his mother’s hand in his own hands, releasing Frank. “No, ma, I’m not moving to Arizona. My whole life is here.”

Carlotta looked to Rudy. “What life? We’re your family, and we’ll be there. You have no job here, no girlfriend…” 

“I’m not a retiree, ma, I’m not putting myself out to pasture so quickly. I’ll go bananas doing nothing out in the desert.” He shrugged. “Besides, all my friends are here.” He made a split-second executive decision to lay the groundwork for later honesty, and lightly touched Frank’s knee. “Frank’s here.” 

“You’d rather stay with your boss than your family?” Carlotta smiled, tossing the idea off like it was patently ridiculous. 

Vinnie froze. The answer was  _ yes _ — he knew his mother was just making a joke, but he had no idea how to respond to the joke without either lying or outing himself. On top of that, if he lied, he’d be throwing Frank under the bus— he didn’t want to stay with  _ his boss _ , he wanted to stay with  _ Frank _ . 

He cleared his throat and tried to answer her question with a question, instead. “Ma, after everything, after spending all that time with him when you thought I was dead, you’re gonna insult Frank by reducing him to ‘my boss,’ really?”

“Vince, it’s—”

“You don’t think he at least rates ‘friend?’”

Carlotta turned to Frank. “Francis, you know I care for you, and that I know you care for Vincenzo, but you understand, don’t you? It would be good for him, to come home and be with family for a while.”

“Don’t drag him into this, ma, it’s not about what’s  _ good _ for me, it’s about what I—”

“Mrs. Terranova, I think what Vince is trying to say here is that, even if he’s not working undercover anymore, he and I still have some work that needs to be settled. And job opportunities will be easier somewhere where I can still be a reference, since the rest of the OCB is a bit harder to get anything out of these days.” He cleared his throat. “And we still need to fully re-establish him without his cover, and that’ll be much simpler in person than over the phone.” 

Vinnie squeezed his knee, breathing out slowly. Frank’s bedside manner was abrupt, sure, but he could make  _ anything _ sound like a professional necessity. 

Rudy stood up and took Carlotta’s arm. “Vincenzo has his own life, Carlotta. He’s not a boy, you can’t just tell him he needs to come home when you feel like it.”

Help from Aiuppo was neither wanted nor needed, but at least it was one more statement in the way of him simply blurting  _ ‘I’m not moving to Arizona because my boyfriend lives in New York.’  _

Carlotta looked at Rudy with that steel that allowed her to say  _ no _ to a retired crime lord, the same steel that let her stare down Sonny back in the day, and the very steel that Vinnie had inherited that made him such a good agent. “Then we’ll stay here,” she decided, certain and final. “I won’t waste the time we’ve been granted half a continent away from my son.”

Vinnie stood up and threw his arms around his mother. “Mama, if you decided to come back, I would be thrilled,” he declared, earnestly. Family had always been so important to him, but after Pete had died, the Terranovas had stopped functioning as a unit. He missed his mom. 

Of course, closer to home, questions like ‘why don’t you have a girlfriend’ and ‘why is Frank always at your house’ and ‘why does he keep coming to family dinners’ were going to come sooner, but he could live with that.

He took Carlotta by the shoulders. “But I want you to make sure you’re making the best choices for your own life, too. I’m not going anywhere. You got time to figure out what you want to do.” He glanced briefly at Rudy, who nodded almost imperceptibly. He might be pissed off at the old goat, but he did understand him.

Plopping back down on the couch, Vinnie crossed his legs, ankle on his knee. Carlotta returned to sitting as well, and Rudy tactfully changed the subject, asking Frank about his work. Frank chuckled darkly. A gentle ribbing back-and-forth ensued, utterly surreal, and they all fell into friendly smalltalk for the rest of the morning and early afternoon. Carlotta fed them, expansively, and with bellies round as ticks, Vinnie and Frank departed with one more round of crying and hugs. 

In the car, Frank gave Vinnie a long, quiet look of appraisal before pulling away from the curb.

“Your mom seems happy,” he breathed, checking the rearview mirror.

“Not being dead has that effect,” Vinnie agreed, knowing there had to be more coming. 

“You were about to tell her,” he muttered, deep as an aquifer, soft as piled earth. 

Vinnie pursed his lips slightly, slowly nodding his head. “Guess I was.”

Frank nodded in sync with him. 

“You actually ready for that?”

“No,” Vinnie admitted, tapping his fingers on the armrest. “But I won’t be ready until the Pope decides we’re exonerating all Catholic homosexuals, and my mother and probably both of us will be long dead at that point.” 

“You don’t think clemency for queers and degenerates is high on John Paul’s list?”

“You read the  _ Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons _ ?”

“Have  _ you _ ?”

“Pete,” Vinnie tossed. He smiled at the memory. “I was in prison at the time, but he wrote me a couple of very angry letters about it.”

Frank smiled a sad little smile, just a quick blink and a twitch of his mouth to one side. “I think I would’ve liked to have gotten to know your brother better.”

“Me too.” Vinnie leaned his head on his hand, elbow against the door. “Me too.”

Frank’s hand settled soft on his leg, and stayed there until they got to the grocery store. 

As they parked, Frank made a face, mouth slightly open, brows slightly furrowed, head tilted just a bit to one side. 

“Vince, do men go grocery shopping together?”

Vinnie’s brow furrowed as well, confusion mirrored. “I dunno.” He looked at the store’s entrance. The vast majority of the people entering and exiting were women; a handful of single men slid in and out with one-item purchases like beer and loaves of bread. “You think that’s a gay thing?”

“I have no idea,” Frank admitted, watching the customers through the windshield. 

“Wait—” Vinnie considered, tapping his finger in the air as he tried to remember, “Wait, you and I have been shopping before.”

“Yeah, but that was the mall,” Frank dissented, shaking his head, “And besides, that was while we were still…” He rolled his eyes, probably at himself for making an attempt at mincing words. “When we were fucking.”

“No,” Vinnie shook his head. “That was after you dumped me the first time.” 

“Vince, I dropped you off at home after the thing with Uncle Mike and Stephen, and you, uh,” his voice dropped precipitously, both quiet and deep, “blew me at your kitchen table.” 

Vinnie snorted and covered his mouth. “Yeah, but that was  _ well _ after I’d broken up with Amber. It had been like seven months.” 

Frank leaned back, one eyebrow raised high, one eye open wider than the other. “More like four.”

Vinnie squinted, and then remembered a cold can of beer pressed to his bare chest, a boat, alone in the middle of a lake, a night spent under the stars. “ _ Oh _ . August.”

“August.” 

They looked at each other over the gear shift, out of the corners of their eyes.

“We should do that again,” Vinnie rumbled. 

Frank tilted his head to the other side, exposing his teeth. He laughed— a literal  _ heh heh heh _ — and smacked Vinnie on the thigh. “After we get eggs.”

Vinnie was pleased to see that, behind the beard, he was rather red. 

Climbing out of the car, Vinnie confirmed, quietly, “So is the consensus that men don’t shop together?”

“I don’t think so, Vin.” He locked the car door and checked his pocket for his wallet. 

“You okay with this, then?”

“Sure,” Frank shrugged, looking surprisingly well-acclimated to the idea of Gay Shopping. “Let’s go scandalize some heterosexual mothers.” 

In fact, no one seemed at all scandalized by their shopping trip. As with most trips to the grocery store, most shoppers were oblivious to anything happening to anyone other than themselves. They picked up at least a week’s worth of groceries, plus pantry staples, and every time Frank stopped to weigh the benefits of two brands, or looked over his glasses at something a little too far away, or stopped with one hand on the cart, Vinnie’s list in hand, Vinnie wanted to kiss him. They had been so much and yet too little to one another for so long; here and now, arguing about whether or not it was worth paying the extra money for non-store-brand pasta (it was), Vinnie felt like a goddamn newlywed. He felt like a bell, chiming just the right tone, all vibration and clarity and pure exultation. 

His whole life, Vinnie had always fallen a little too hard a little too fast. Let his guard down too soon, become attached too quickly— but it hadn’t been like that with Frank. With Frank, it had been a slow, cautious dance, as many steps back as forward, a careful probing of each other’s facades and truths as they moved from enmity to collegiality to friendship to devotion. In some ways, all of this felt incredibly sudden. After all, two days ago he was in Puerto Rico, barely able to hold it together long enough to book a flight, and now he was playing house with his best friend, thinking about how he wanted to do this every week for the rest of his life. But in other ways, it was the most logical next step he had ever made in his life. 

He loved Frank. He had loved him in Seattle, holding his unconscious hand at his bedside. He had loved him that cold week in New York, when he had met his father and Frank had told him he wasn’t his boyfriend. He had loved him in DC, when Frank had fought through hell and back for him, never giving up on him for a second. 

And now he could love him on shared terms. With understanding between them instead of just longing. 

By the time they left the grocery store, Vinnie felt like he was glowing. 

Frank pointed it out as they were loading the groceries into the back of the car.

“Vince, why do you look at me like that?”

Vinnie closed the trunk. “Like what?”

“Like I’m Daryl Hannah wearing a bikini made of cannoli cream.” He looked at Vinnie over the top of the car, radiating disbelief, amusement, and concern. Once Vinnie met his eyes, he raised his eyebrows and swung down into the driver’s seat. 

Laughing, Vinnie followed. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I’m Frank McPike, wearing a sweater made of something moths like to eat.” 

“Frank, I look at you like I love you.” 

“You sure that’s it?”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”

Frank turned the car on, raising one eyebrow incredulously, squinting on the other side. 

“You’re aware I’m not all that good-looking, right?”

“It’s not up to you to decide what I think’s attractive, Frank.”

Frank made a low grumbling noise, somewhere between a  _ hmm _ and a rock tumbler. 

Pulling out onto the freeway, Frank cleared his throat. 

“Hey, I…” Vinnie could see his eyes darting around with irritation. “I gave you kind of a non-answer to a question earlier, and since we’re supposed to be, uhh, communicating and all that—” He cleared his throat again and squinted. “I don’t actually care what Jenny’s reaction would be. About us.” 

Vinnie’s head snapped to the side, eyes on Frank’s face.

“What I do care about,” he sighed, “and this is why I kind of sidestepped the question earlier, is how  _ Drake _ is going to react. I mean—” He shrugged his shoulders, giving Vinnie a half-lidded look through his glasses, “You’d have been…  _ caught off guard _ if you found out your pops had a thing for guys, right?”

“That would be an understatement,” Vinnie grimaced, eyes widening. “And that’s coming from someone who’s known he swung both ways since before getting out of Little League.” 

“I just…” Frank’s head lolled to one side, blinking excessively. “I don’t want to keep things from him. But I also really, really don’t want him to hate me.” 

“I understand,” Vinnie agreed. He felt similarly about his mother. “You know we don’t  _ have _ to tell him, Frank— I mean, he’s a kid. We can just be good friends as far as he knows.”

Frank looked at him a little too long for road safety, utterly withering. “So says the man who apparently figured out he was bisexual in primary school?” 

Vinnie frowned. “Fair. And I guess kids these days are pretty savvy, huh.” 

“Y’know that moment as a kid when you figure out, ‘holy shit, my parents had sex, and I don’t ever want think about it again?’” Frank scratched his eyebrow. “I would assume that’s a more difficult revelation when it’s ‘holy shit my father is currently having sex with a big, tall, muscular  _ man _ .’” 

Squinting, Vinnie tried to come up with a good way to phrase an out— there had to be a way to keep the kid in the dark without playing up the Daddy’s Roommate angle. 

“But,” Frank continued, before Vinnie could finish collecting his thoughts, “I’m not saying I  _ won’t _ tell him, just that… I think he needs to  _ know you _ first. I mean, know you as more than just ‘the cool guy dad works with.’ I feel like if he knows you as a person, if he already trusts you…” 

His eyebrows scrunched together in the middle, but he seemed reasonably assured of his own plan. 

Vinnie nodded, patting him softly on the leg. 

“I don’t want to monopolize your time with requests to get to know my child, but… if you’d be willing.”

“Frank,” Vinnie breathed, the hand resting on his leg squeezing slightly. “I don’t think you realize how much it means to me that you want me to be involved in your kid’s life. That’s a pretty heavy-duty sign you want me around for the long-haul.” 

Coloring, Frank glanced out the driver’s side window. 

“Yeah. Well. You’re pretty alright.” He put his hand over Vinnie’s.

And then he made a long, slow noise, not entirely unlike a distressed farm animal. 

“I still can’t shake the feeling I’m going to turn around and be talking to an empty seat, y’know.” He interlaced their fingers. “This is… it’s so…”

“Surreal?”

“ _ Nice _ .” 

Vinnie snorted.

“Too nice.” He raised one eyebrow at Vinnie. “Nice things don’t happen to me, or you.”

“Maybe this is…” Vinnie shrugged. “A reward.”

Now it was Frank’s turn to snort. 

“Or I had a stroke yesterday and you’re a very friendly bleed in my brain.”

“Or I could still be tied to a chair and you’re a hallucination,” Vinnie countered. He pulled Frank’s hand to his lips and kissed the back of his thumb. “But I panic every time someone runs the water, and I’m fifteen pounds underweight, and I’ve got a bunch of scars I didn’t have before, and none of that magically went away when you said the L-word, so I’m going to bank on the fact that we’re both really here.”

Frank leaned back slightly, left hand loose on the wheel as they made their way home. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, half-closing his eyes, and gave Vinnie a look like he had said something offensive, or handed him something unsavory to eat. 

“What?”

“How does an emotional polymath like yourself make so many spectacularly bad decisions?”

Vinnie grinned. “How does a hardass like you end up getting so  _ vulnerable _ around someone who makes as bad decisions as I do?”

“Now  _ that _ ’s a damn good question,” Frank exclaimed, following up a puff of amused and horrified air. 

“You think he’ll start calling me ‘Uncle Vince?’”

Frank smacked him in the arm, releasing his gentle grip on his hand. “I will die of mortification if my son starts calling my romantic partner ‘uncle.’”

Vinnie continued ribbing him. “Dad’s special friend Vince?” 

“You looking to walk home?”

“Papa Vincenzo?”

“Are we a couple, or are we running a pizza parlor together?”

The badgering persisted much of the way home, culminating in some rather aggressive pawing when they found their way over the threshold to Frank’s living room. Frank kissed Vinie up against the wall, his body pressed hard to Vinnie’s, his hands on his hips. Vinnie tilted his head up as Frank ghosted his lips against his throat, holding him against him by the belt loops. 

Frank pulled away and they both looked off to the side. He put his hand on the back of his neck and looked up at the ceiling, making a low grumbling noise.

“Groceries.” He cleared his throat. “And  _ talking _ .”

“Talking,” Vinnie sighed. Now wasn’t the time for sex, even if Frank was making him ache for it. He looked down at the floor, between their feet, hands on Frank’s arms. “You know, when me’n Amber when to couples’ counseling, the shrink told us not to have sex because we, uh…” He paused, trying to find the words for it. “We didn’t know how to love each other any other way, I guess. But… I  _ know _ how to love you, Frank, with or without sex.”

Frank raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I’m amenable, if it’s, uh, back on the table.”

“I dunno,” Vinnie grumbled, “I want to, but…” He released Frank’s arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s just a lot unsaid between us, y’know? We… I don’t want to use being randy as an excuse to keep putting off…”

“Figuring things out for real?”

Vinnie nodded. 

Frank grinned, as much as Frank ever grinned— a lazy, carnivorous flash of teeth, more on one side than the other, eyes half-lidded. “Well, ice cream’s melting anyway.” He reached up and patted Vinnie on the cheek, still giving him that look.

And they did, really, seriously, no bullshit, manage to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening talking. Not all of it was serious, but Vinnie found himself reminded of the days and nights Frank had spent on his couch when Jenny had first called it quits— it was real talk, comfortable and open. And occasionally suggestive. And interspersed with ribbing and arguments and just the slightest amount of name-calling. At one point, Vinnie made some kind of joke at Frank’s expense, and Frank flopped his head on Vinnie’s shoulder and grumbled, “Fuck you and all your forefathers,” eyes closed, his hand resting on the inside of Vinnie’s thigh. Vinnie kissed the tip of his nose in response, and the corner’s of Frank’s eyes crinkled with warmth. 

He sighed, long and low, eyes still closed. “I cannot believe I have to go to work tomorrow.” He opened one eye at Vinnie. “And… am I announcing you’re alive, or what?”

“Sure, yeah.” Vinnie bonked the top of his head against the top of Frank’s. “I could come with you, as long as they don’t try to rehire me.” 

“Campbell probably won’t want you, anyway, since he’s an asshole and barely wants me around.” Frank nodded, and then leaned forward to stand. “But yeah, come with me. If you don’t mind spending your third day home playing show-and-tell, that is.” He stood up and stretched his arms behind his back.

“No, it’ll be nice to see Mike. I might ask that you drive me to my house first, though, so I can pick up my car.” 

“Sure.”

“Figure, I’ll go scare the living daylights out of a couple of friends and loved ones once I’m done with Old Home Day at the agency.” Vinnie pushed himself up off the couch. 

“Who you gonna see?”

Vinnie shrugged. He wasn’t honestly sure who’d really care— his mom had probably already lit up the phone of every Terranova and Terranova-adjacent Paisan in the tri-state area, and his personal friends were few and far between. Most of them had ditched him when he went to jail, and the rest were ‘friends’ from undercover— largely jailbirds themselves. Theoretically, since he wasn’t under anymore, now he could reconnect with the people who had dumped him when they thought he was a crook, but honestly… they had already shown him who they really were. 

He rattled off a very short list, following Frank to the bathroom. “Mooch, I guess. Maybe Angie, if she’s around, but ma might have told her already. And, uh, Amber, and Bobby actually.” 

His head turned back over his shoulder, leaning over the sink, Frank raised an eyebrow. He grabbed his toothbrush and squeezed toothpaste out over it. 

“You’re not jealous of her, too, are you?” Vinnie slid his back partway down the hallway wall, arms crossed, grinning. 

“Am I jealous of the stunningly beautiful blonde woman you proposed to last year?” Through a mouthful of toothpaste, Frank mumbled, “Why would I  _ possibly _ be jealous of Amber.” 

Vinnie snorted. “Frank, you recall how  _ you _ pushed me to make that relationship work?” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Besides, last time I talked to her, she had some new bass player boyfriend, anyway.”

Frank grumbled something unintelligible. 

“And even if neither of those things were true,” Vinnie assured, moving to join Frank at the sink. He leaned down and kissed the nape of Frank’s neck. “I’m a one man guy.” He wrapped his arms around Frank’s waist, leaning his head on his back. “I don’t tell someone I love them lightly, Frank.”

“Stop pawing me while I’m brushing my teeth,” Frank murmured, sudsy and borderline unintelligible. He spat, splashed water into his mouth and turned to face Vinnie, still locked in his arms. He looked at his with a mixture of tenderness and exasperation, looping his arms around him in return. “And I know. And I love the hell out of you, Vince.” He tilted his head to the side, tired blue eyes on his face. “And I’m still a little jealous. I mean, I think the only person on that list you haven’t slept with or tried to sleep with is Cacciatore.”

Vinnie felt himself coloring. 

“Jesus christ, Vince, please tell me you didn’t sleep with a man named ‘Mooch.’”

“It was kid stuff, locker room shit. Jacked each other off once or twice after practice, nothing more.” Vinnie pouted, playing up his hurt and embarrassment. “See, all this says about me is that I’m a nice man who can stay friendly with his exes, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank nodded, mouth curling up to one side. “And that I’m in  _ deep _ trouble.” 

“Why, afraid you won’t be able to keep up with my libido or something?” Vinnie leaned in and kissed the corner of Frank’s mouth, smiling. 

Frank chuckled low and dark, and then snaked his hand between their faces, prying Vinnie off him. “Brush your teeth, Don Juan. I need to sleep.”

Vinnie took Frank’s face in his hands and kissed him again, a gleeful puckering on his cheek. He gave him a very firm pat on the ass as he exited the bathroom for the bed. Frank swatted his hand away with an affectionate smirk. 

When Vinnie finished brushing his teeth and washing his face, he sauntered into Frank’s bedroom. Frank was in a grey t-shirt, legs already under the covers, sitting on the right side of the bed with a book in his hand. The desire to get on top of him— pin his arms to the bed and kiss his neck red— was immense. Instead, he pulled his shirt off over his head; Frank pretended he was reading and not watching, sending a jolt of electricity into Vinnie’s stomach. 

Frank’s eyes were all the way on him as he started unbuttoning his pants, but he didn’t say anything or make any move to express further interest. Vinnie stripped to his boxers, and thought about  _ talking _ and being a real partner to Frank instead of just a good lay. With a silent sigh, he dug through his duffel bag for a shirt to wear as a pajama, and slipped it on.

As Vinnie walked over toward the unoccupied side of the bed, Frank looked at him sideways. “This is so damn strange.”

“What?”

“Have we ever done this?” Frank questioned, one eye squinted half shut. “The whole ‘g’night dear,’ I-pass-you-my-glasses-and-turn-out-the-lights-routine?” 

Vinnie slid in under the covers. Frank’s bed was only a full, so quarters were a bit close for two grown men. 

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve only ever fallen asleep in my bed after sex.”

“Well, your bed sucks, so. Usually I would avoid sleeping here without some kind of incentive.”

“No argument there.” Frank put a bookmark in his book. “S’just very  _ domestic _ , is all.” 

“Is that a problem?”

“On the contrary,” Frank smiled. “Oddly enough, it feels kind of…” He took a deep breath in and sighed audibly, almost teakettle-like through his nose. “Right. Not to get too mushy or anything.” 

Vinnie leaned over and ever-so-gently touched his lips to Frank’s shoulder. 

Still ghosting his lips against Frank’s arm, Vinnie murmured, “Feels like we’re breaking the rules.”

“We  _ are _ ,” Frank reminded him.

Vinnie flopped down in the bed, half on his back, half on his side, looking up at Frank. “I mean, I know that. We’ve broken the rules a lot together,” he grinned. “But somehow… settling down to just…  _ sleep _ beside you right now feels like more of a transgression than sucking your dick ever did.”

Frank removed his glasses and placed them on the bedside table, and then flicked off the light. He laid down facing Vinnie, leaning on one arm. 

“Yeah, well,” he agreed, low and gravelly, “You and I aren’t built for honesty, Vince. We’re undercover men. And besides, we weren’t— neither of us— this right here,” he gestured with his other hand between them, “I wasn’t raised to even think something like this was a  _ possibility _ . I mean, you understand— men like us have been… fucking in seedy motel rooms since motels were invented, but…”

He closed the gap between them with his hand, his palm and thumb on Vinnie’s cheek. “Settling down? It’s like a mission to Mars. Totally uncharted territory.”

Vinnie covered Frank’s hand with his own, kissing the mound of his thumb. “Well, no one better to explore uncharted territory with than a  _ Terranova _ , right?”

Frank laughed, a wheezy chuckle that turned into a sigh. “Vince, your name could be ‘LaDangerousMistakeo’ and I’d still be on board.”

“Oh, I’ve got some cousins who are LaDangerousMistakeos,” Vinnie snorted, pulling Fank closer to him. He draped his arm over Frank’s middle, nose-to-nose and knees-to-knees. 

“Shut up and listen for a second,” Frank grumbled, putting his fingers over Vinnie’s mouth. “I am  _ terrified _ , Vince. All of this is  _ terrifying _ . But it’s worth it. I’ve tried living without you.” He got very quiet, the gravel in his voice becoming almost a crack, like something brittle crumbling at the touch of a hammer. “I don’t ever want to do that again.”

Vinnie pulled him even closer, smashing their mouths together like a first kiss, clumsy and desperate. When he stopped, brushing his lips against the corner of Frank’s mouth, he slid his arm beneath his head and kissed his forehead, too. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Vince.” Frank let himself relax into Vinnie’s arms, kissing his bicep before closing his eyes with a sigh and practically jellying against him. 

He touched Vinnie’s chin with the backs of his fingers, looking into his eyes. 

“Tell me something, Vince.” His tone was gruff, like he was about to ask Vince about a controversial political topic, but there was no followup. 

Vinnie rubbed featherlight circles over Frank’s skin, his fingertips soft on his ribs. “Like what?” 

“I dunno. Something you’ve never told me before.” Frank blinked, lazy and slow, the shadows on his face like a blanket. “How does that sound?”

Leaning in, closer to this man— this beautiful, angry, sad man Vinnie was starting to let himself believe he might wake up next to for the next couple of decades— he traced the backs of Frank’s fingers with his lips and the tip of his nose.

“That sounds like a great place to start.”


End file.
